Green to gold mile: An environmental justice analysis of drought and mitigation policy impacts on home landscapes in Sacramento California: Fid-Bau Portal

Green to gold mile: An environmental justice analysis of drought and mitigation policy impacts on home landscapes in Sacramento California

Simpson, Sheryl-Ann / Altschuld, Camille / Ortiz, Arturo / Aravena, Magdalena

Abstract

Highlights • During deep drought, the City of Sacramento focused mitigation policy on managing turfgrass lawns and home landscapes. • Home landscapes are key sites for environmental relationships and display. • Without an equity approach home landscapes quality diverged, and correlated with residents' socio-economic (SES) character. • A short transect, the green to gold mile, depicts the divergence with green lawns for high SES turfgrass defenders. • Low SES gold adaptors' landscapes were strained by drought & policy, but residents show care with alternative use & display.

Abstract Home landscapes are vast a ecosystem being impacted by both ecological change related to the contemporary climate crisis and increased economic, racial and ethnic diversity in suburban areas. We argue that to attend to these changes residential planning and design needs to adopt an equity framework attentive to the possibilities for environmental justice and just sustainability. We develop this argument through a case study of the impacts of both the deep drought (2011–2017) and drought mitigation policies on home landscapes in Sacramento California. We ask three interrelated questions: 1) is there change in the form of home landscapes across a socio-economicly diverse transect of the city? 2) If there is change, are there spatial patterns to the change; and 3) if there is change are there relationships between change and the socio-economic characteristics of residents? We find distinct patterns of change between, and cohesion within neighborhoods. Further our findings suggest that the drought-mitigation policies, focused primarily on water reduction, economic incentives and disincentives, and without an equity framework contribute to conditions of environmental injustice. In this case residents of the wealthiest neighborhood 'turfgrass defenders' are deploying social and economic capital to by-pass the effects of the drought and new policies. At the other extreme the 'gold adapters' in the lowest income and most ethnically diverse neighborhood are having to live with and creatively use landscapes harmed by both drought and management practices enforced through drought mitigation policies.