race and social justice

Society for Human Ecology

The Geography of Despair: Environmental Racism and the Making of South Phoenix, Arizona, USA Author(s): Bob Bolin, Sara Grineski and Timothy Collins Source: Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, Special Issue on 'Nature, Science, and Social Movements' (Winter 2005), pp. 156-168 Published by: Society for Human Ecology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24707530 Accessed: 19-03-2018 19:47 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide

range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and

facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

Society for Human Ecology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Human Ecology Review

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Research in Human Ecology

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

Bob Bolin

School of Human Evolution and Social Change and International Institute of Sustainability Arizona State University Tempe AZ 85287-2402 USA1

Sara Grineski

International Institute of Sustainability and Department of Sociology Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-4802 USA2

Timothy Collins International Institute of Sustainability and Department of Geography Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0104 USA3

Abstract

This paper discusses the historical geographical con struction 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 rela tions 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 rep resentations 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 stigmatization and environmental degradation in South Phoenix. This process constructed a durable zone of mixed minority residential and industrial land uses that sur vives 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.

Keywords: environmental justice, environmental racism, historical geographic development. Phoenix, Arizona

Introduction

Environmental justice studies over the last decade have explored the socio-spatial distributions of hazardous indus tries and have provided substantial evidence of a dispropor tionate presence of toxic industries and waste sites in many minority, low income communities in the US (e.g. Lester et al. 2001). Less attention has been given to the social process es that produce these environmental injustices over extended historical periods. Analyses of the historical geographic de velopment of environmental inequities, particularly the ways that race and class are imbricated in the production and uses of urban space, have begun to appear in the literature (e.g. Boone and Modarres 1999). As Pulido (2000) suggests, there is a need in environmental justice studies to consider the complex ways racism, capitalist accumulation strategies, and class privilege are entwined in the historical development of urban landscapes, including the locations of both residential areas and industrial districts. Understanding the ways racial categories are socially constructed and employed in the pro duction of space in the city, including the distributions of people and environmental hazards is a central part of under standing environmental racism (Pulido et al. 1996). As we discuss in this paper, the diverse ways race is constructed are tightly connected to the local social relations of production,

156 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 © Society for Human Ecology

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

configurations of power, and spatial practices (e.g. Pulido 2000; Soja 1989).

Our concern here is to examine the historical develop ment of a zone of pronounced and chronic environmental in equity in Phoenix, Arizona, exploring the effects of racism and class privilege in constructing this hazardscape. Phoenix today is the largest and fastest growing city in the desert Southwest of the US, a sprawling metropolitan area with a current population approaching 3.5 million spread out over more than 2000 sq. km of former Sonoran desert. At the cen ter of this urban complex is a contaminated zone of mixed land uses (see Figure 1) which currently hosts an assemblage of industrial and waste sites, crisscrossed by freeways and railroads, and under the primary flight path of Sky Harbor, the US's 6th busiest airport (Bolin et al. 2002).

Scattered throughout this district are the city's oldest African-American and Latino4 neighborhoods, places which have until recently contained the majority of Phoenix's mi nority populations. The environmental fate of this district, known locally as South Phoenix5, was cemented nearly a cen tury ago, linked to a complex of factors including pervasive racial exclusion, class domination, political disenfranchise ment, and a racially segmented economy. These factors, im bricated in a variety of historical combinations, have been materialized in distinct land-use and socio-economic patterns in the central city.

We begin by offering a historical sketch of the early de velopment of Phoenix, considering the ways racist practices contributed to shaping land uses in the old urban core. We examine the ways public representations of minority neigh borhoods focus on filth, disease, and contamination, discur

sively attaching a persistent stigma both to people and place in minority districts of Phoenix. We next discuss the mutual

Source: adapted from Bolin et al. (2000)

Figure 1. Map of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

ly reinforcing relationship of these cultural representations to an ensemble of land uses and policies, ranging from industri al and transportation encroachment in minority neighbor hoods to bank redlining and neighborhood disinvestment. We consider a period that stretches from early 20th century de velopment to the post-war period when Phoenix entered its current 'boomtown' period of rapidly accelerating population and industrial growth. The socio-spatial processes that have shaped the creation of social and environmental conditions in South Phoenix have taken place in the context of an aggres sive pro-business and anti-democratic political culture, propped up by large federal expenditures on water projects and military production (Wiley and Gottlieb 1985). Lastly, we briefly note the emerging contestations of hazardous fa cilities sitings by environmental justice activists and citizen groups in South Phoenix, as initial steps toward mitigating a century of environmental racism.

Environmental Racism: Conceptual Issues

Perhaps the most contentious issue in historical environ mental justice studies concerns environmental racism and whether race-based discrimination can be invoked as an ex

planatory factor in environmental inequalities (Pastor et al. 2001). Because of the political and legal freight that the term carries, both for researchers and community activists, claims about the prevalence of environmental racism are contested (e.g., Pulido 1996). The term environmental racism gained currency after the UCC (1987) study highlighted the impor tance of race in predicting of the location of hazardous waste facilities, based on a national US study (see also Bryant and Mohai 1992; cf. Anderton et al. 1994). The environmental jus tice literature appears divided over what constitutes environ mental racism. A 'pure discrimination model' (Hamilton 1995) argues that environmental racism must involve racially moti vated, intentional acts against people of color by those making

facility siting and other land use decisions (Pulido 2000). Other researchers discount intentionality as a necessary

element in defining racism, instead focusing on the variety of

historical and current institutional practices that disadvantage

people of color and produce environmental inequalities (Bullard 1996). Proponents of this approach argue that insti tutional racism, in all its diverse ideological, discursive, and political-economic manifestations, operating at a variety of spatial scales, must be seen as the key in environmental dis crimination, whether explicitly intentional acts are involved or

not (Pulido 2000). As critics have noted, focusing on the issue of intentionality in siting unwanted facilities in minority

neighborhoods elides consideration of the succession of land uses, patterns of housing segregation, racialized employment patterns, financial practices, and the ways that race permeates

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 157

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

zoning, development, and bank lending processes in urban areas (Boone and Modarres 1999; Cole and Foster 2001; Rabin 1990). The focus on intentionality in discriminatory spatial practices neglects the "simultaneous evolution of racism..., class formation, and the development of industrial landscapes" [emphasis in original] (Pulido et al. 1996, 420).

In a theoretically informed discussion of environmental

discrimination, Pulido (2000, 15) advances the concept of 'white privilege.' In her usage, white privilege denotes a hegemonic form of racism, deeply embedded in ideologies and practices, that works to (re)produce white advantage across time and space. Conceptually, it calls attention to the relationships of different racial groupings in urban space and the ways that 'whiteness,' as a cultural construct, confers eco

nomic and social benefits to those so marked, thus linking race and class. Applied to environmental justice research, it points to the need for comparisons of those who bear heavy environmental burdens with those who are able to avoid them

through residential and employment decisions (Szasz and Meuser 1997). In this context, the growth of racially exclu sive white suburbs, a pattern that predominates in Phoenix's century-long expansion outward from city center, is exem plary of the geography of racial privilege. It is a socio-spa tial process that has inexorably shifted both environmental and economic burdens toward those remaining in the central city (e.g., Pulido 2000; Bolin et al. 2000; Sicotte 2003).

In this paper, we use 'environmental racism' to denote a

complex of social and spatial practices which systematically disadvantage people marked by certain racial categories. In the case of Phoenix (and the US generally) until the mid 1960s, racist discourses were pervasive and racial divisions and inequalities were 'naturalized' to the point of being taken for granted. We consider environmental racism to include acts of omission, such as failing to provide urban infrastruc ture and acts of commission, such as the imposition of un wanted land uses, regardless of whether there was spe cific intent to harm people of color.

Historical Overview

Unlike other cities of the Southwestern US Sunbelt

(Albuquerque, El Paso, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Tucson), which began with centuries old Spanish colonial and Mexican settlements, Phoenix was founded by Anglos and had no pre-existing Indian or Mexican settlements to displace (Sheridan 1995). Established in the late 1860s as an agricultural center in the Salt River Valley of central Arizona, early land speculators used the rem nants of 14th century Hohokam Indian canal systems to

bring water to the otherwise parched Sonoran desert. While the Hohokam had abandoned major settlements in

Table 1. Maricopa County Population Statistics, 1900-2000.

Maricopa County 1900 1950 2000

Total population 20,457 331,770 3,072,149 Latino -3,000 -50,000 763,341 Black 210 14,409 108,521 White 13,783 289,402 2,034,530

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1900, 1950 and 2000

Note: Latino figures for 1900 and 1950 are estimates based on Luckingham 1994

the valley some four centuries earlier, for reasons not well un

derstood (Abbot 2003), the new settlers optimistically named the nascent city Phoenix, assuming it would not share the fate of the earlier settlements. With the revival of the ancient

canal system, the 'worthless desert' gained value as agricul tural land and established the central role water would play in the political economy of Phoenix.

By the late 19th century, Mexicans and Mexican-Amer icans were the largest 'minority group' in Phoenix (Table 1), joined by smaller populations of African Americans, Chinese,

and American Indians (U.S. Census of Population 1900, 1950, 2000). While all racial/ethnic minorities were the sub

jects of discriminatory discourses and practices, those direct ed at Latinos and Blacks had the most persistent effects on land use and place construction in the city. Residential seg regation and unregulated land uses in minority districts began shaping social and environmental conditions in what would become South Phoenix by the 1890s, when Phoenix's popu lation numbered fewer than 5,000 people. Even at this early stage in the development of the city, the dividing line between

Anglo Phoenix and the southern subaltern district was begin ning to be established, demarcated by an east-west rail corri dor first established in 1887 (Myrick 1980). This corridor soon began serving as both the physical and symbolic bound ary between two developing urban worlds (Figure 2).

Legend ;

— City Limits ~~Sr

E AfricanAmerican Residential Area

Latino Residential Area

E ■ n

12 St 16 St

Source: Adapted from Roberts (1973)

Figure 2. Minority Neighborhoods in Phoenix, 1911.

158 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

Mexicans were, almost from the city's founding in 1870, marginalized and excluded in most economic sectors, being relegated primarily to field work in local

agricultural production (Dimas 1999). This reflects general patterns of agricultural production in the Southwest US, which had come to rely on low-wage Mexican labor by the 1870s. This pattern of employ ment segregation persists today in California and Ari zona. In the hegemonic ideology of the period, Mexi cans were viewed as 'naturally' predisposed to stoop work in fields picking fruits and vegetables and cultur ally adapted to low wages and poverty (Walsh 1999). Mexicans and Mexican Americans were systematically disadvantaged in the early political economy of the city. By 1900, wealth, political power and property were controlled by a growing Anglo business and po litical elite, a factor critical in shaping race relations and the production of space in the emerging city. As Luck ingham (1989, 8) notes, "Phoenix, from its founding was run by Anglos for Anglos," a consequence of which was the pro duction of a persistent north-south geography of uneven de velopment across the city.

An unapologetic pro-growth 'boosterism' has been a central ideological feature of the ruling class in Phoenix from

its earliest days and has shaped innumerable planning and in vestment decisions over the last century designed to ensure growth, profitability, and capital accumulation (e.g. Mawn 1979; Wylie and Gottlieb 1985). Critical in Phoenix's early growth was the establishment of railroad linkages to external markets, and it is the railroad that gained a primary role in shaping the industrial ecology and patterns of racial segrega tion in the urban core (see Figure 2) (Kotlanger 1983). The rail corridor transecting southern Phoenix became, by the 1890s, a magnet for industrial, warehousing, and stockyard activity. Some of the city's earliest industries located 'south of the tracks': these included meat packing and rendering plants, foundries, ice factories, flour mills, brick factories and

food processing facilities, giving the district a durable indus trial presence (Mawn 1979). The railroad also anchored a growing warehouse district, as the city rapidly emerged by 1920 as a regional distribution center (Russell 1986). The east-west line of the railroad served a relatively impermeable residential barrier between the poor Black and Latino dis tricts of South Phoenix and Anglo Phoenix extending from the central business district, northward. Today, the rail corri dor remains a zone of environmental justice concerns (Bolin et al. 2002) (see Figures 2 and 3).

The northward movement of Anglo residential develop ment began after major flooding on the Salt River in 1891 showed the hazardousness of living on the floodplain. This left the area between the central business district (CBD) and

Source: adapted from Roberts (1973)

Figure 3. Minority Neighborhoods in Phoenix, 1940.

the Salt River channel as a liminal zone hosting the rail corri dor and an expanding industrial presence, in proximity to the

agricultural fields which were the mainstay of the city's econ omy in the early 20th century. The barrios and ghettoes of South Phoenix languished in the interstitial areas between factories and fields, well isolated from the expanding white only neighborhoods to the north (Dimas 1999). Public ex penditures on water lines, sewage, paved roads and urban ser vices were directed toward neighborhoods north of the down town, while those south of the rail corridor did without, in some areas well into the 1960s (Russell 1986). The lack of basic urban services south of the rail corridor throughout this

period contributed to the increasingly unhealthy living condi tions prevalent in its low-income neighborhoods. Indeed the city's storm water rains, first constructed in 1890, directed runoff and untreated sewage of Anglo neighborhoods into the

minority neighborhoods of South Phoenix, "...victimizing] the lower areas with filth and stench" and causing "... the tran

sition of a desirable residential neighborhood into a depressed area" (Mawn 1979,140). Because much of South Phoenix re mained outside the city limits and political jurisdiction of Phoenix until annexations in 1959 and 1960, land use regula tions were lax and urban services were minimal (Konig 1982). The low land values in the district made the area at

tractive to continuing industrialization into the 20th century,

which in turn, engendered continuing environmental blight in residential areas adjacent to the industries (Mawn 1979).

South Phoenix, by the 1920s, was indelibly marked in the

Anglo controlled media as an undesirable district of industry, stockyards, and minorities not suitable for the privileged class es (Luckingham 1994). North of the CBD, a new urban trol ley system provided transportation to growing suburban White

neighborhoods springing up (Russell 1986). This growth, in turn, was promoted by a the Salt River Project, a federal water

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 159

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

project which by 1920 was providing reliable water supplies for urban and agricultural uses in central Arizona (Reisner 1993). Indeed, as Reisner (1993) notes, the availability of fed erally subsidized water promoted rapid increases in land val ues in desirable parts of Phoenix leading to a frenzy of land speculation and housing development in the early 1920s.

By this time, clear effects of 'white privilege' (Pulido 2000) can be seen in the city's development patterns, with Anglo middle classes increasingly distancing themselves from the degraded environmental and residential conditions of South Phoenix as city limits were extended northward in a series of annexations (Luckingham 1994). Unlike cities of the US industrial heartland, with distinct patterns of 'white flight' to suburbs as central cities deteriorated (e.g. Harvey 1996), Phoenix's split of a minority urban core and expand ing white suburbs on the periphery has been in place for the last century. A Chamber of Commerce report in 1920 articu lated the desired image of Phoenix when it characterized the city as "a modern town of forty thousand people, and the best kind of people too. A very small percentage for Mexicans, Negroes, or foreigners" (quoted in Kotlanger 1983, 396). For Phoenix boosters, the "best kind of people" were Anglo and middle class, the social class that promoters historically have

sought to attract as tourists and as new residents to the city (Luckingham 1994).

Irrespective of city boosters' visions of a racially pure desert Utopia, the region has attracted people of color since its founding. Initial African American settlement in the Phoenix area began in the latter part of the 19th century as migrants escaping racism in southern states came west. Phoenix, how ever, offered little refuge from segregation and discrimina tion, and by 1912 African Americans were subject to a vari ety of laws enforcing strict residential, schooling, and em ployment segregation, practices that persisted well into the Civil Rights era of the 1960s (Harris 1983). A net socio-spa tial effect of racial control and exclusion in this period is the concentration, even today, of much of Phoenix's proportion ately small Black population in a few census tracts of South Phoenix (Sicotte 2003). Both African Americans and Latinos were segregated and racially controlled by a wide variety of formal and informal practices that remain inscribed in the city's current spatial form.

Race and Place

Race and class inequalities were deeply entwined in the process of place construction in Phoenix, as was typical of US cities of the period (e.g. Harvey 1996). The hegemonic racism that held sway among Arizona's political elite and the

planning and investment decisions that were shaped by it in sured that South Phoenix's early industrial trajectory would

not be stopped in deference to the growing residential popu lations in the district. Racist discourses fused race and place as embodied characteristics by ascribing 'hazardous' tenden cies to bodily characteristics and cultural practices, thus jus tifying the segregation of 'races' (Brunk 1996; cf. Craddock 2000). As Young (1991, 126) notes, when a dominant class "...defines some groups as different, as the Other, the mem bers of these groups are imprisoned in their bodies. Domi nant discourse defines them in terms of bodily characteristics

and constructs their bodies as ugly, dirty, defiled, impure, contaminated, or sick." It also rationalizes and justifies their separation in space.

Such discourses were present from the earliest days in Phoenix as an 1879 newspaper account illustrates:

[Mexicans] do their washing and cooking on the sidewalks, and all manner of filth is thrown into the [irrigation] ditches. They have no outhouses, and the stench arising from the numerous adobe holes is

simply fearful... Some portions of our town surpass that of the Chinese quarters6 in San Francisco for filth and stench (quoted in Luckingham 1994. 18).

Signifiers like 'dirt,' 'filth,' and 'disease' were all used by the media to stigmatize residents of South Phoenix for decades, helping to reinforce their Otherness to the 'right kind of peo ple' in Anglo Phoenix. The colligation of racial stereotypes and degraded living conditions of the inhabitants of South Phoenix legitimated, in turn, a wholesale official neglect of the region, expressed both in unregulated industrialization and an absence of urban services for the residents of the area

well into post-war boom period (e.g. Mawn 1979). Racism was not evenly applied. Blacks and Latinos

were subjected to different patterns of discrimination, and, further, were internally segregated along racial and class lines within South Phoenix itself (cf. Figure 2 and 3). African Americans were subject to formal segregation typical of much of the US through the 1960s. In Phoenix, a variety of laws and strict social rules of deference to Whites in public spaces produced near absolute residential, employment, health care, and educational segregation (Luckingham 1994, 1989). An active Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s enforced racial

discipline on African Americans in the city although their vigilantism attracted far fewer followers than it did in the Southern US (Harris 1983). Unlike Latinos, Blacks were re stricted by Arizona law to Black-only schools. When none was available, Blacks had to endure the humiliation of micro

segregation at White schools in so-called 'colored rooms.' In Phoenix, a 'colored cottage,' a small outbuilding where Black high school students were isolated was used, as if they were carriers of contagious diseases. This form of micro-segrega tion continued until the city's first segregated 'colored' high

160 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

school was built in 1927 (Hagerty 1976). Federally mandat ed school and housing desegregation, however, would not begin until the 1960s, permitting continuing racial segrega tion in Phoenix in a variety of spatial scales, from the class room and workplace to entire zones within the urban core. Indeed, deed restrictions and housing covenants, as well as lending practices kept African Americans out of all-White suburbs until fair housing laws began to be enforced in the 1970s (Harris 1983; Gammage 1999). These forms of spatial and social control reinforced the economic marginality of most of the city's African American population, restricted as they were to service work and as agricultural laborers through the 1920s (Horton 1941). US Census7 reports cover ing four decades from 1900 to 1940 show the overrepresen tation of 'Negroes' in domestic work and unskilled laborers (primarily farm and railroad work) as well as among the un employed (US Census 1922, 1943). While income figures are not given, surrogate indicators including mortality rates and housing conditions (discussed below) suggest pervasive poverty among Blacks.

Socio-spatial discrimination against Latinos was more pronounced in Phoenix than other Southwestern cities in the region that originated as Spanish colonial and Mexican set tlements (Dimas 1999; Sheridan 1995). While the barrios of Phoenix provided settings for the continuation of Mexican cultural traditions and practices, they were contained there by

an all White police force (Dimas 1999). As Dimas notes (1999, 32), the internal segregation of the Catholic Church, with Latinos restricted to the basement for services in the

1920s was "perhaps the most profound indicator of the prej udice and discrimination that the Mexican population faced...in the Valley." In addition to spatial control, cultural control took the form of efforts to 'Americanize' Latinos in

the 1920s and '30s, including teaching young women how to be domestic servants in Anglo households of north Phoenix (Mawn 1979). While Latinos were not subject to the apartheid-like conditions of Blacks, they were equally re stricted in employment and to residential locations in South Phoenix, circumstances that persisted until US housing and employment laws were changed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As Dimas (1999) reports, labor markets were clearly racial ized, with the primary occupations for Latinos prior to World

War 11 in very low wage agricultural field work and as labor ers in the warehouse district adjacent to the rail corridor (Luckingham 1989).

The sequestration and spatial control of people of color in Phoenix is an exemplar of what Sibley calls 'spatial purifi cation,' using race and class segregation to separate the puta tive threats of disease, crime, and moral corruption of the poor from the middle classes in their 'purified' suburbs (1995, 77). As Sharpe and Wallock contend (1994, 9): "That

[White] suburbanites effectively wall out those unlike them selves after arriving [in suburban neighborhoods] suggests that a major force driving their migration is the wish to es cape racial and class intermingling." This aptly describes a process that has characterized urban growth in Phoenix since the 1890s and continues today with the ongoing expansion of

predominantly class segregated suburbs increasingly distant from the pollution and poverty of South Phoenix.

Health and Housing South of the Tracks

The material effects of racial discrimination, spatial con

trol, and unregulated land uses in South Phoenix were pro nounced by the 1920s. By then, living conditions for the poorest Latinos and African Americans in South Phoenix were, by all accounts, dire; blame for conditions was placed on residents. Areas of housing, comprising a mix of tents with hastily erected shacks of cardboard and scrap wood, with no water or sewage, were clustered between factories, warehouses, and stockyards (Horton 1941). The stockyards and unregulated emissions of factories and trains produced a miasma of contaminated air and water in which low-income

Phoenicians lived and worked. The presence of sugar beet processing factories and meat packing plants inevitably con tributed to high concentrations of smoke and putrid odors in adjacent minority neighborhoods (Mawn 1979; Russell 1986). Heat-related deaths and high infant mortality were commonplace in summers when daytime temperatures con sistently exceed 40°C. Overcrowded housing, severe pover ty, and malnutrition were prevalent as were epidemics of ty phoid and tuberculosis in the 1920s and '30s across the dis trict (Kotlanger 1983). Infant mortality data from the De pression era clearly shows death rates for Blacks, Latinos, and Indians as two to three times the White rate (Buck 1936).

T.C. Cuvellier, working for the Arizona State Board of Health, reported housing conditions in Black and Latino areas of the city to be severely degraded (Culvellier 1920, 5):

... many families were found eating and sleeping in a single room with scores of them crowded into a single block or group of dwellings opening onto a common court. In many cases children were found living in the same room as persons afflicted with positive cases of [tuberculosis]. In many cases filth and flies contributed to the general squalor and un healthiness of the surroundings, and more de plorable still, many families, as high as ten, were found making use of a single vile smelling toilet.

Local newspapers affixed blame for conditions claiming that: "...poverty and colossal ignorance are claiming their tolls among little brown babies... and that such a congestion of un

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 1 61

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

fortunates [was] a combined result of poverty and the greed and inhuman disregard of landlords" (quoted in Kotlanger 1983, 429). While such descriptions were common in local newspapers, there were virtually no systematic attempts to mitigate such conditions until federal resources became available in the latter part of the 1930s. Further, evidence suggests that the city refused to try to control the predatory activities of landlords well into the post-war period (Brunk 1996).

The lack of potable water, sanitation, adequate diet, or healthcare along with the pestilential runoff of industries con

tributed to chronic health problems of South Phoenix resi dents. While Anglo Phoenix neighborhoods had an expand ing water and sewage infrastructure in the 1920s, none was extended to South Phoenix for decades, other than that need

ed for the growing industrial district along the rail corridor (Kotlanger 1983). Conversely the city's first sewage pro cessing plant (1921) was placed in South Phoenix, along with landfills located along the banks of the Salt River (Mawn 1979). In this fashion, impoverished South Phoenix func tioned as the dumping ground for wastes produced in the re mainder of the city.

Referred to as the ''the shame of Phoenix" in a 1920

community report, living conditions in South Phoenix were described as "fully as bad as any... in the tenement districts of

New York and other large centers of population" (quoted in Kotlanger 1983, 129). A community worker asserted that housing conditions found in South Phoenix in the late 1920s and early 1930s "helped Arizona attain the highest infant death rate in the nation" and earn the federal distinction of

being the worst slum in the US (McLoughlin 1954, 40). A description of a Black neighborhood in 1930s is indicative, with the neighborhood described as:

permeated with the odors of a fertilizer plant, an iron foundry, a thousand open privies and the city sewage disposal plant.. . Its dwellings for the most part were shacks, many without electricity, most without plumbing and heat. They were built of tin cans, cardboard boxes, and wooden crates picked up by railroad tracks (McLoughlin 1954, 41).

These conditions were exacerbated during the Depression as unemployment surged and incomes dropped. A survey of 'slum conditions' in South Phoenix in 1939 examined 4065

houses, finding that only 289 of the homes could be classified

as meeting accepted standards. On one block, the surveyors found only two houses with running water, and only one with an inside toilet. One outside toilet was shared by 24 families

and only seven homes had electricity (Horton 1941). Blame for the degraded living conditions in health and housing in South Phoenix was largely affixed to the people living there,

not local governments or businesses. There was recognition that if living conditions were better disease and mortality could be reduced. But as the following quote from the State director of public health illustrates the problem was assigned to how children were 'born' and raised: "if [Indian] babies were well-born and well-cared for, their mortality rates would be negligible" (Cuvellier 1922, 12).

The public representations of people, disease, and gen eral living conditions in South Phoenix, while calling atten tion to the squalid conditions, also worked to reinforce the stigmatization of the area. Further, they tended to treat living conditions and health issues as the fault of the inhabitants of

South Phoenix, rather than the effects of an ensemble of eco

nomic and social practices generating pronounced inequali ties. As David Harvey notes (1996, 321),

Representations of places have material conse quences in so far as fantasies, desires, fears, and longings are expressed in actual behavior. Evalua tive schemata of places ...become grist for all sorts of policy-makers' mills. Places in the city get red lined for mortgage finance, the people who live in them get written off as worthless ...The material ac tivities of place construction may then fulfill the prophecies of degradation and dereliction.

This is a suitable description of the contradictory effects of public representations of South Phoenix on policy, planning and place construction in Phoenix for much of the 20th cen tury. It was well recognized by 1920 that housing and living conditions were inhumane. Yet, according to the apparent logic of city leaders, as evidenced by decades of planning and permitting of industrial land uses, since South Phoenix had little of value to preserve, continued emplacement of indus tries and transportation routes would have little additional negative effect on the district (e.g. Sicotte 2003; Sobotta 2002; Dimas 1999).

Institutionalizing Racism in Place

These degraded living conditions there were officially ignored by the city of Phoenix except for scattered attempts at constructing public housing. The advent of federal New Deal housing assistance programs in the 1930s made grants available for constructing low income housing. Some three hundred units of racially segregated public housing were built

during the late 1930s to relieve the worst of housing condi tions. Separate clusters of modest housing for poor Whites, Blacks, and Latinos were built in 'appropriately' segregated areas of South Phoenix, although the numbers built did little

to address the overall housing needs in the district (Zachary 2001).

162 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

Nevertheless, at the same time that Phoenix was secur

ing federal monies to build low- income Depression era hous ing, it was also institutionalizing leading practices that would perpetuate the deteriorated housing and economic marginali ty of South Phoenix neighborhoods. In 1933, the federal government created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) as an economic stimulus to mitigate the rash of mortgage foreclosures sweeping the US. To delineate areas within the city 'worthy' of HOLC monies it relied on the overtly racist National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) policies to appraise and map the city (Brunk 1996). Phoenix was coded into districts based on the demo

graphic characteristics of the inhabitants. Neighborhoods with African American, Latino or "foreign" residents, ac cording to NAREB standards, warranted a 'hazardous' rating and were red lined, denying loans to residents. Minority neighborhoods concentrated in southern Phoenix were denied HOLC monies although housing stock and living conditions were recognized as among the worst in the US. Brunk (1996, 67) concludes that the "HOLC locked in the urban configura tion for Phoenix by withholding relief funds from minority neighborhoods, thus establishing precedent for institutional housing discrimination." These practices hindered future economic growth in the "hazardous areas." Continued bank redlining of the same area in the postwar period simply per petuated what was initiated in the 1930s (Dimas 1999).

Although some public housing was built in the 1930s it had little effect on housing conditions in South Phoenix. A 1941 report describes conditions in the subaltern district:

Phoenix has shockingly disgraceful slum areas... The slums created a public health menace as a breeding place for disease. They fostered juvenile delinquency and created social problems that af fected the entire community. They discouraged de velopment of areas in which they were situated and tended to ser\>e as a serious drain in some areas,

three of four persons lived in single-roomed shacks which had only dirt floors and no modern conve niences... children grew up in them (Horton 1941, 183).

Missing from Horton's statement is any attempt to under stand the sources of 'slum conditions' and the assertion that

slums were a problem because they 'affected the entire com munity' and were a 'menace.' Further, even after a decade of

heavy military spending during World War II, living condi tions in South Phoenix remained much as they had. Perva sive employment segregation and a racist system of bank redlining noted above ensured that neither good paying jobs nor housing loans could be easily obtained in the district (e.g. Brunk 1996; Konig 1982, 21). An Urban League report on

Phoenix in the 1950s found that 95% of the city's Black pop ulation lived in the most deteriorated districts of South

Phoenix (McCoy 2000). A historical lack of planning, land use regulation, or

public investment, along with an array of racially discrimina tory practices worked to keep housing deteriorated and land prices low, making this blighted area attractive to industries seeking to locate near the rail corridor and the CBD (Kot langer 1983). While Phoenix adopted a limited zoning ordi nance in 1930, it was used primarily to keep White middle class neighborhoods north of the CBD homogeneous and to protect property values there by keeping both industry and minorities out (Gammage 1999).

Postwar Industrialization and Suburbanization

While Phoenix banks and real estate industry may have considered the people of South Phoenix "hazardous" and the area too financially risky to build homes in, another set of risks and hazards were already being built into the district. These took (and continue to take) the form of substantial en

vironmental hazards from toxic chemicals, air pollution, and hazardous wastes dispersed across the industrialized zone. Since the 1890s, as noted previously, a variety of land uses not permitted in Anglo Phoenix (stock yards, factories, ren dering plants, meat packing facilities, sewage facilities, and land fills) could be found in the midst of minority South Phoenix. By the onset of the Depression more than 100 man ufacturing firms were located south of the rail corridor and by

this period more than 80 km of railroad tracks crossed South

Phoenix, connecting dispersed factories to the main rail line (Buchanan 1978).

One consequence was to further disperse manufacturing sites among residential areas of South Phoenix, establishing the rail infrastructure for further industrial expansion in the

post-war period. Although the deteriorated housing and en vironmental conditions and high unemployment in the dis trict were well documented in the 1930s, the city continued to encourage industrialization there (Phoenix Action 1955). By the 1950s it was reported that three-quarters of Phoenix's 1000 manufacturing facilities were within 2 km of the rail road, reflecting the expanding agglomeration of industry in South Phoenix as well as in newer industrial districts to the

north and west (Hamilton and Huneke 1954). In a variety of reports in the 1950s and 1960s the advantages of Phoenix's industrial district were promoted to attract industry to the city. The presence of a non-union workforce and the avail ability of large tracts of low cost land for factory sites and ad

jacent worker housing were considered part of the area's ad vantage (e.g. Stacker 1955; Kelly 1964; Konig 1982.)

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 163

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

And while the railroad declined in significance as a major transportation anchor in the city since 1950, it has been

joined by new modes creating additional impacts across South Phoenix. First, beginning in the 1960s construction of an intra-urban freeway system was initiated, leading to the in

sertion of two major freeways across South Phoenix parallel ing the railroad corridor (Figure 1). This was followed by the rapid expansion of the centrally located Sky Harbor airport in the 1970s and 1980s. Both have promoted wholesale re moval of entire minority neighborhoods, environmental con tamination, industrialization and neighborhood decline in South Phoenix into the current era (Dimas 1999; Bolin et al.

2002; Sobotta 2003). The airport is now a major anchor for new industries requiring proximity to air transport, becoming

in the process one of the most contaminated census tracts in Phoenix (Bolin et al. 2002).

Although the stockyards and agricultural activities slow ly disappeared in South Phoenix as the metropolitan area en tered its postwar boom, the industrial presence there expand ed to produce significant hazard burdens (Bolin et al. 2002). The postwar boom period of population growth, economic expansion, and rapid suburbanization had few positive effects on South Phoenix. Little was done in the immediate postwar period to address the severe low-income housing problems already well documented in the 1930s. While federal loan programs in the 1940s and 1950s made low interest mort gages available through the Federal Housing Authority, these were available only for White home buyers seeking to pur chase the tract homes in the burgeoning northern suburbs of

Phoenix. Thus people of color not only could not qualify for regular mortgages or low interest home loans to improve South Phoenix homes, they were also denied access to the all White northern suburbs with their restrictive race covenants

(Brunk 1996; McCoy 2000). A 1946 report by county officials described post-war

South Phoenix living conditions as unchanged from the Great Depression (Montgomery 1946). The report described "Steinbeck-esque Joad families living in dilapidated housing, row after row of open backyard toilets, which smelled to high heaven and dust blanketed, littered streets and even dirtier al

leys, and children played in a squalor that a hog raiser would n't tolerate in his pens..." (quoted in Zachary 2001, 203). In another area, squatters lived in an abandoned stable. In the 1950s when the squatters were evicted, city officials discov ered that as many as 50 families with up to 60 children had lived in these dwellings without electricity, water or trash col

lection for over five years. The chronic slums of South Phoenix exemplified Phoenix's inability to manage rapid growth (Zachary 2001, 203). Prospects for mitigation were limited as few resources were available in the 1950s, and with

the rapidly expanding White middle class suburbs there was

virtually no political support to assist Phoenix's poor and people of color. At best African Americans and Latinos in South Phoenix might be able to acquire small five-year mort gages, resulting in a poorly constructed homes because of in adequate financing (McCoy 2000). As one commentator noted on housing disparities in Phoenix in the 1950s:

At [the tiorth] end of town, you'll find long, row ranch house mansions of the well-to-do. Down near the other end, you'll find the packing-box like shacks of the very poor...mostly Mexican-Ameri cans. As with any city, the slums are something we don't quite know what to do about and never like to talk about (Stocke 1955, 58).

As recently as the mid-1960s, it was reported that "Phoenix ... finds itself saddled with square mile after square mile of some of the most run-down, dilapidated housing in urban America ...whole blocks are served by one or two water taps ... behind a street facing row of shacks is built a second row, and even a third, of equally inadequate structures" (Citron 1966, 8).

While the poor of South Phoenix were materially ex cluded from the postwar housing boom, their neighborhoods were increasingly encroached upon by new industries moving to Phoenix after the war. Reflective of the industrial expan sion, Stacker (1955) notes that between 1948 and 1952, more than 100 new manufacturers moved into Phoenix, creating 9000 new jobs. As of 1955, it was estimated that Phoenix had more than 1000 manufacturing plants (Stacker 1955). With this influx of industry, industrially zoned areas in South Phoenix expanded, both to the southwest on former farmland and east to Sky Harbor airport. The continued emplacement of new industries adjacent to homes in the district eroded al ready low values. A 'model community' of single-family homes for African Americans built was constructed in South

Phoenix in 1959. The area ostensibly contained the best homes for Black families in the city. But property values were not protected from encroachment of industry and erec tion of substandard dwellings and homes in this development were sold in 1965 for 15% of the price they sold for in 1959 (Banner and Dyer 1965, 68).

After World War II, the defense industry in Phoenix be

came a prominent economic sector, particularly in aerospace and electronics. These new 'high tech' defense industries were heavily courted by a politically powerful pro-growth coalition in the city from the 1940s on, offering large tax abatements and cheap land to lure industry to Phoenix (Wiley and Gottlieb 1985; Konig 1982). In the 1950s this coalition successfully attracted major electronics firms such as Mo torola to Phoenix, companies that were flush with lucrative Cold War era contracts (McCoy 2000). Konig (1982, 28)

164 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

notes that a total of 290 industrial firms moved to the city in the 1950s, placing factories both in the older industrial dis trict of South Phoenix and in expanding industrial districts on what was then the urban periphery. Besides a pro-business tax structure in the city, corporations were also attracted by Arizona's non-union work force, whose wages averaged 25% below national averages (Konig 1982).

In addition to satisfying space requirements, suburban locations of this new generation of electronics facilities pro vided a second locational advantage: access to educated White workers. These large corporate electronics firms de nied employment to Blacks and Latinos until such practices were declared unconstitutional in the 1960s (Sheridan 1995). Then, as now, small-scale subcontractors located in South

Phoenix would provide assembly components for the large electronics firms, part of a general pattern of outsourcing now

common in 'post-Fordist' industrial ensembles (Soja 2000). These subcontractors have historically proven to be far more lax in their pollution and safety record than the large corpo rate plants they supply, adding to the hazard burdens of South

Phoenix (Field 1997; Pijawka et al. 1998). Economic and residential decentralization in the 1950s

encouraged business and public investment in the suburbs, away from the central city, leaving many downtowns mori bund by the 1970s (Hackworth 1999). To revive the declin ing fortunes of Phoenix's CBD, city boosters pursued a num ber of redevelopment schemes. These have variously in volved a variety of public expenditures to build new govern ment facilities, concert halls, and other facilities that would

attract consumers to the CBD. Other redevelopment efforts in the 1970s used tax incentives and other public subsidies to entice commercial and industrial firms into the industrializ

ing zone of South Phoenix. This led to the siting of a num ber of industrial polluters and toxic waste handling facilities along transportation routes in South Phoenix (e.g., Pijawka et al. 1998; Schmandt 1995; Sicotte 2003). The new industries,

however, have done little to reverse the high rates of poverty in South Phoenix where current poverty rates may exceed 40% in a given tract (Bolin et al. 2002).

A political priority for the downtown redevelopment coalition was the placing of two major freeways around the CBD in the 1960s to promote access (Gammage 1999). As a result, two interstate highways were inserted through South Phoenix and around the CBD: 1-17 completed in the 1970s and 1-10 completed in the 1980s (Figure 1). Interstate 17 was

placed directly across Latino neighborhoods of South Phoenix paralleling the historic rail corridor. The resultant high levels of highway traffic contribute to substantial ambi

ent air pollution in this zone today (Bolin et al. 2000). As a consequence of redevelopment efforts since the 1970s, indus trial encroachment on residential areas of South Phoenix be

came increasingly pronounced. Zoning data illustrate the problem: In metropolitan Phoenix today, 3% of residentially zoned areas directly border industrial zoning, in contrast to 35% of neighborhoods in South Phoenix (Bolin et al. 2002).

Although billions of dollars have been spent in the 1990s to 'revive' the downtown, reshaping the city's skyline in the process, those dollars have contributed few if any discernible economic benefits to those living in the adjacent neighbor hoods of South Phoenix (Bolin et al. 2002; Hackworth 1999). Indeed as Burns and Gober (1998) show, there is a significant spatial mismatch between the jobs available in the CBD and adjacent industrial district and the people who take those jobs.

That is, few inner city residents of Phoenix actually work in the

business and factories that are proximate to neighborhoods. Continued industrialization and commercial encroachment in

South Phoenix has done little to improve the economic or en vironmental circumstances of the people who live there.

In addition to the negative effects of highway expansion in South Phoenix, environmental and socioeconomic deterio

ration has been exacerbated by expansion of Phoenix's Sky Harbor airport. The most heavily impacted neighborhood was the Golden Gate Barrio, one of South Phoenix's original Mexican-American neighborhoods (Dimas 1999). Expan sion of Sky Harbor Airport was initiated in the 1970s and called for the extension of the east-west runway system. However, that extension required the removal of residential areas of the Golden Gate barrio, a program that was dutifully undertaken beginning in 1977 (Dimas 1999). By 1986, six teen hundred households had been removed leaving large portions of the landscape vacant and available for airport and industry. The residential value of the area was also under mined by the I-10 freeway corridor, which was placed direct ly across it in the 1980s (see Dimas 1999; MAGTPO 1979). Between 1980 and 1990 alone, 40% of residential land in the

area was converted to industrial uses. Noise and air quality degradation as a result of airport operations continue to bur den nearby South Phoenix neighborhoods (Sobotta 2002).

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice

The origin and development of the patterns of environ mental inequality described here are a product of a persistent and diverse forms of racism, coupled with the primary roles

of transportation corridors and industrialization in shaping the inner city area of Phoenix. The prevalent racial discours

es of the early 20th century, associating filth and disease with

the living habits of minorities helped justify spatial segrega tion. Equally important, it was not just the people who were pathologized: the region in which they lived was likewise stigmatized as a "hazardous" environment. In this fashion, historic racist discourses and practices and their effects on

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 165

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

land use decisions have been literally inscribed on the land scape of central Phoenix.

Decisions to place noxious facilities in the middle of mi nority communities, based on evidence reviewed here, were not made with the sole intent to harm. The creation of in

dustrial zones, and the logics of industrial location are sel dom done with racially motivated intent (Pulido 2000). In deed acts of omission, such as failing to provide urban infra structure or not enforcing housing codes, have been as im portant in the development to environmental inequalities in Phoenix as have been acts of commission (e.g. the imposition

of unwanted land uses). Intentional or not, the net socio-spa tial effect, as we show, has been to produce unequal and un safe environmental burdens on low-income, minority com munities, a condition that has been produced and reproduced socio-environmental conditions in South Phoenix for more

than a century of urban development.

While continued economic marginality of South Phoenix neighborhoods may be, in part, attributed to subur ban expansion and the resource drain on the central city (Guhathakurta and Wichert 1998), it is largely the result of decades of political, planning, and investment decisions (e.g., Wiley and Gottlieb 1985). As we have described it, condi tions in South Phoenix are not intentionally produced yet they clearly flow from a racist ideologies and practices cou pled with a strong political drive to promote growth and de velopment in the city. To promote a century of industrializa tion adjacent to low-income neighborhoods, without concern for the well being of residents or any substantial investment in housing for its residents is environmental racism (Bull ard 1996; Pulido 2000). Within South Phoenix, Latinos and African Americans have borne disproportionate environmen tal burdens, yet have received few economic benefits from in

dustrial and commercial presence in their neighborhoods (Bolin et al. 2002; Burns and Gober 1998).

While African Americans and Latinos historically lacked the political and economic power to effectively contest the degradation of their neighborhoods, the post-World War II period has been marked by changing legal and political con ditions. Building off the 1954 Supreme Court decision to de segregate public schools and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, South Phoenix activists have opposed segregation, and sought improved housing and employment opportunities in their neighborhoods (Luckingham 1994). The Environ mental Justice movement, which began in the 1980s in the US, linked civil rights issues with environmental concerns providing a new political frame for community activism across the country (Szasz 1994). Changing regulatory and legal structures, including a 1994 presidential mandate for federal agencies to address environmental justice concerns, have enabled new forms of political activism in environmen

tally stressed minority communities (e.g. Pellow 2000). In the case of minority neighborhoods in Phoenix, a

number of citizen movements against toxic waste sites and hazardous industries emerged in the 1990s (Sicotte 2003; Struglia 1993). In the contemporary political milieu, haz ardous industry sitings no longer go uncontested. In a polit ical and legal environment shaped by civil rights and Envi ronmental Justice principles, a variety of recent lawsuits over the permitting of hazardous facilities in South Phoenix have

been filed. Local neighborhood movements and environmen tal justice organizations now frequently deploy the term 'en vironmental racism' at site-specific protests. However the success of such contestations has been mixed and few conta

minating industries have been denied permits or required to shut down (Sicotte 2003).

Once the 'permanences' of industrial zonation are in place, it is a challenge to alter the built landscape to benefit low-income residents. Industries will continue to locate on

land near transportation corridors and waste disposal facili ties and pollute neighborhoods, unless interventions are po litically mandated and there are wholesale changes in zoning and land use. Once an area has begun to function as a center for industrial production and other commercial activities such

as storage and transportation that land use legacy will persist, even with the decline of the original commercial enterprises. That industries seek vacant land adjacent to both transporta tion corridors and waste disposal facilities is well document ed, insuring that, as in the case of South Phoenix, an ag glomeration of hazardous sites and other residentially incompatible land uses will tend to develop around an initial transportation or industrial node. In South Phoenix, there have been no official actions to discourage such land uses, and in the case of some neighborhoods, zoning has been used to eliminate residential uses all together (Dimas 1999).

The persistent expansion of environmental burdens in South Phoenix, despite major changes in federal regulations, scientific knowledge of toxic hazards, and the environmental justice movement, reflect ongoing neglect by city officials. Environmental activists have been quick to label this disre gard as racism (Sicotte 2003). While the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality initiated a marginally funded toxic

hazards reduction program for South Phoenix, the first year of that program has seen no reductions mandated (ADEQ 2003). The pervasive racism that shaped the early landscape and economy of Phoenix set in place processes of industrial ization and residential patterns that appear to be changing slowly in the current period of rapid urban growth. Few re sources are today being directed toward rehabilitating South

Phoenix and mitigating industrial hazards in its neighbor hoods, reinforcing a century long pattern grounded in racial exclusion and class privilege.

166 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

Endnotes

1. Author to whom correspondence should be directed: E-mail: [email protected]

2. E-mail: [email protected]

3. E-mail: [email protected]

4. The term Latino refers to residents who can trace ancestry to coun tries of Latin America. In Phoenix most Latinos have roots in Mexi

co. The term is more inclusive than Mexican-American. We use the

term Anglo and White interchangeably. In the Southwest US, Anglo

is commonly used to designate White populations.

5. South Phoenix is administratively part of the city of Phoenix although

it is recognized as a distinct area within the city, one whose boundaries

have expanded with central city development over the last century.

6. The reference to San Francisco's Chinatown is significant as it was

discursively constructed by Whites of the period as a center of filth,

moral corruption, and disease, and hence a putative threat to the

health and moral well being of the Anglo majority (Craddock 2000).

To compare South Phoenix to Chinatown is to place it in the context

of what the popular press held to be the most degraded of US ethnic enclaves.

7. The US Census in this period listed Mexican Americans under Whites, making it impossible to separate out Latino populations.

While the Census lists 'foreign born' Whites, which likely include

large numbers of Mexican born residents, the census doesn't provide

sufficient information to separate out Latinos from European born

whites. While Mexican Americans were 'White' according to the

Census, there were nevertheless subject to racial stereotyping and

discrimination (Dimas 1999).

References

Abbot, D. (ed.) 2003. Centuries of Decline during the Hohokam Classic

Period at Pueblo Grande. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

ADEQ (Arizona Department of Air Quality). 2003. Development of a Multi-Media Toxic Reduction Plan for the South Phoenix area. Phoenix, Arizona: ADEQ.

Anderton. D.L., A.B. Anderson, J.M. Oakes, and M.R. Fraser. 1994. Envi

ronmental Equity: The Demographics of Dumping. Demography 31,229-48.

Banner, W.M., and T.M. Dyer. 1965. Economic and Cultural Progress of

the Negro: Phoenix, Arizona. Prepared for the Phoenix Urban League

by the Research Department of the National Urban League, New York. New York.

Bolin, B., Nelson, A., Hackett, E.. Pijawka, D. Smith. S., Sadalla , E„ Sicotte, D., Matranga, E., O'Donnell, M. 2002. The Ecology of Tech

nological Risk in a Sunbelt City. Environment and Planning A 34, 317-339.

Bolin. B., Matranga, E„ Hackett, E., Sadalla, E„ Pijawka, D„ Brewer, D.,

Sicotte, D. 2000 Environmental Equity in a Sunbelt City: The Spatial Distribution of Toxic Hazards in Phoenix, Arizona. Environmental

Hazards 2,1, 11-24.

Boone, C. and A. Modarres. 1999. Creating a Toxic Neighborhood In Los

Angeles County: A Historical Examination of Environmental In

equity. Urban Affairs Review 35,2, 163-187.

Brunk, L. 1996. A Federal Legacy: Phoenix's Cultural Geography. Palo Verde 4,1, 60-78.

Buchanan, James E. 1978. Phoenix, A Chronological and Documentary History: 1865-1976. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications.

Buck, E.E. 1936. A Survey of Public Health in Arizona. Report conduct

ed by the Arizona Statewide Public Health Committee.

Bryant, B„ and P. Mohai. 1992. Race and the incidence of environmental hazards. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Bullard, R. 1990. Dumping in Dixie. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Burns, Elizabeth K. and Patricia Gober. 1998. Job-Linkages in Inner-City

Phoenix. Urban Geography 19,1, 12-23.

Craddock, Susan. 2000. City of Plagues: Disease. Poverty and Deviance

in San Francisco. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Citron, Marilyn. 1966. Of Slums and Slumlords. Reveille 1, 8-11. Cole, L., and S.R. Foster. 2001. From the ground up: Environmental racism

and the rise of the environmental justice movement. New York: New

York University Press.

Cuvellier, T.C. 1920. Health Surveys and Clinics. Arizona State Board of Health Bulletin, VIII,14. 5-10.

Dimas, Peter R. 1999. Progress and a Mexican American Community's

Struggle for Existence: Phoenix's Golden Gate Barrio. New York:

Peter Lang Publishing.

Field. R. 1997. Risk and Justice: Capitalist Production and the Environ

ment. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 8,2, 69-94.

Gammage, G. 1999. Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Development

in the Desert. Tempe, AZ: The Herberger Center for Design Excel lence, Arizona State University.

Guhathakurta, S. and A. Wichert. 1998. Who Pays for Growth in the City

of Phoenix? An Equity-Based Perspective on Suburbanization. Urban Affairs Review 33,6, 813-838.

Hackworth, J. 1999. Local Planning and Economic Restructuring: A Syn

thetic Interpretation of Urban Redevelopment. Journal of Planning Education and Research 18, 293-306.

Hagerty, M. 1976. A Bicentennial Commemorative history of the Phoenix

Union High School. Report available at the Tempe Public Library,

Tempe, AZ.

Hamilton. J. 1995. Testing for Environmental Racism: Prejudice, Profits, Po

litical Power? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 14,107-132.

Hamilton, R. and J. Huneke. 1956. Evaluation of the Phoenix Property

of the Tovrea Land and Cattle Company. SRI Project # 1-1724.

Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell, London.

Harris, Richard E. 1983. The First Hundred Years A History of Arizona's

Blacks. Apache Junction, AZ :Relmo Publications.

Holifield. R. 2001. Defining Environmental Justice and Environmental

Racism. Urban Geography 22,1, 78-90.

Horton, Arthur G. 1941. An Economic, Political, and Social Survey of

Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun. Tempe, AZ, Southside Press.

Kelly, T. 1964. The Changing Face of Phoenix... acceleration of dynamic

and sweeping. Arizona Highways. March Issue.

Konig, Michael. 1982. Phoenix in the 1950s, Urban Growth in the "Sun belt." Arizona and the West, 19-38.

Kotlanger, Michael J. 1983. Phoenix, Arizona: 1920-1940. Doctoral Dis

sertation. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.

Lester, J.. Allen, D., Hill, K. 2001. Environmental Injustices in the United States. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005 167

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Bolin, Grineski and Collins

Luckingham, B. 19B9. Phoenix: A History of a Southwest Metropolis. Tuc

son, AZ:University of Arizona Press.

Luckingham, B. 1994. Minorities in Phoenix. Tucson. AZ:University of Arizona Press.

MAGTPO- Maricopa Association of Governments Transportation and Planning Office. 1979. Executive Summary and Recommendations

for Implementing the Phoenix Urban Area Freeway/Expressway Sys

tem. December 13. Arizona Collection: Arizona State University.

Mawn, Geoffrey Padraic. 1979. Phoenix: Arizona: Central City of the Southwest, 1870-1920. Volumes 1-2. Doctoral Dissertation. Arizona

State University, Tempe, AZ.

McCoy, Matthew Gann 2000. Urban Metropolis: Image building and the

growth of Phoenix, 1940-1965. Doctoral Dissertation. Arizona State

University, Tempe. AZ.

McLoughlin, Emmett. 1954. People's Padre. Boston: Beacon Press.

Montgomery, E.M. 1946. Community Survey of Family and Child Welfare,

Health, Recreation and Community Organization Programs in Met

ropolitan Phoenix. Phoenix Citizens Survey Committee. Under the

Auspices of Community Chests and Councils, Inc. New York, New York.

Myrick, David, F. 1980. Railroads of Arizona, Volume II. San Diego, CA: Howell-North Books.

Pastor, M.. J. Sadd, and J. Hipp. 2001, Which Came First? Toxic Facilities.

Minority Move in and Environmental Justice. Journal of Urban Af

fairs 23, 1-21.

Pellow, D. 2000. Environmental Inequality Formation: Toward a Theory of Environmental Injustice. American Behavioral Scientist 43,4, 581 - 601.

Phoenix Action. 1955. Monthly newsletter of the Phoenix Chamber of

Commerce. November-December Issue, X (9): N.p.

Pijawka, K.D.. Blair, J., Guhathakurta, S., Lebiednik, S.. Ashur, S. 1998

Environmental Equity in Central Cities: Socioeconomic Dimensions

and Planning Strategies. Journal of Planning Education and Re search 18, 113-123.

Pulido, L., Sidawi, S.,Vos, R., 1996. An Archaeology of Environmental

Racism in Los Angeles. Urban Geography 17,5, 419-439.

Pulido. L. 2000. Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and

Urban Development in Southern California. Annals of the Associa

tion of American Geographer, 90,1,12-40.

Rabin, Y. 1990. Expulsive Zoning: The Inequitable Legacy of Euclid in Haar, C. and I. Kayden (eds.) Zoning and the American Dream. Chicago: American Planning Association.

Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disap

pearing Water. New York: Penguin Books.

Roberts, S. 1973. Minority-Group Poverty in Phoenix: A Socio-Economic

Survey. Journal of Arizona History 14,73, 347-362.

Russell, Peter Lee. 1986. Downtown's Downturn: A Historical Geography

of the Phoenix, Arizona, Central Business District, 1890-1986. Mas

ter's Thesis. Tempe, AZ:Arizona State University.

Schmandt. J. 1995. Postmodernism and the Southwest Urban Landscape.

Doctoral Dissertation. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.

Sharpe. W. and L. Wallock. 1994. Bold New City or Built-Up 'Burb? Re

defining Contemporary Suburbia. American Quarterly 46, 1-30.

Sheridan, T. 1995. Arizona: A History. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Sibley, D. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the

West. London: Routlege.

Sicotte. Diane, M. 2003. Race, Class and Chemicals: the political ecolo

gy of environmental injustices in Arizona. Doctoral Dissertation.

Tempe, AZ:Arizona State University. Sobotta, R. 2002. Communities, Contours and Concerns: Environmental

Justice and Aviation Noise. Doctoral Dissertation. Tempe, AZ:Ari

zona State University.

Soja, E. 2000. PostmetropoUs: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Lon don: Blackwell.

Stocker, Joseph. 1955. Arizona, a guide to easier living. New York City:Harper & Brothers.

Struglia, R. 1993. The Politics of Groundwater Contamination: A Case

Study of Two Supeifund Sites in Phoenix, Arizona. Master's Thesis.

Tempe, AZ:Arizona State University.

Szasz, A. 1994. Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environ

mental Justice. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Szasz, A., and M. Meuser. 1997. Environmental inequalities: Literature

review and proposals for new directions in research and theory. Cur

rent Sociology 5, 3, 99-120.

US Bureau of the Census. 1900. 1900 Census of Population. Government

Printing Office. Washington, DC.

US Bureau of the Census. 1922. 1920 Census of Population. Volume IV.

Government Printing Office. Washington, DC.

US Bureau of the Census. 1943. 1940 Census of US Population. Volume III. Government Printing Office. Washington, DC.

US Bureau of the Census. 1950. 1950 Census of Population. Government

Printing Office. Washington, DC.

US Bureau of the Census. 2000. 2000 Census of Population. From Sum mary File 3. Available at www.census.gov.

UCC (United Church of Christ) Commission for Racial Justice. 1987.

Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the

Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites. New York: Public Data Access, Inc.

Walsh, J. 1999. Laboring at the Margins: Welfare and the Regulation of

Mexican Workers in Southern California. Antipode 31,4, 398-420.

Wiley, Peter and Robert Gottlieb. 1985. Empires in the Sun: The Rise of

the New American West. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Young, I. 1991. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Zachary, Bruce I. 2001. /I Nascent Federalism: federal urban relations,

public housing, Phoenix, Arizona, and San Diego, California, 1933

1949. Doctoral Dissertation. Tempe, AZ:Arizona State University.

168 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

This content downloaded from 198.82.230.35 on Mon, 19 Mar 2018 19:47:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms