Greening the Steel City:Testing for Environmental Gentrification in Allegheny County

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Mitchell, Gregory
Graduate Program:
Energy, Environmental, and Food Economics
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
March 16, 2020
Committee Members:
Katherine Yoder Zipp, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Theodore Roberts Alter, Committee Member
Justine F Lindemann, Committee Member
Edward C Jaenicke, Program Head/Chair
Keywords:
Environmental Justice
Sustainability
Gentrification
TRI
Environmental Racism
Abstract:
Environmental, green, or ecological gentrification is the process whereby improvements in local environmental amenities—such as new green spaces or the cleanup of a locally undesirable land use (LULU)—either cause or exacerbate gentrifying processes. This a direct threat to the progress of the environmental justice movement whereby residents of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color face the highest possibility of displacement, negating any benefits of environmental improvements for these populations. This paper provides evidence of racialized displacement from 1990-2010 due to environmental cleanups in Allegheny County, PA. By investigating the cleanup of EPA Toxic Release Inventory facilities in Allegheny County, this paper explores how the benefits of environmental cleanups can differ by group. Specifically, this study shows how environmental cleanups in a postindustrial region can affect neighborhoods’ size, median income, and racial composition. Using a differences-in-differences design, this paper, while finding somewhat mixed evidence of the scale and income effects, finds compelling evidence of a racial composition effect. On average, the complete cleanup of a neighborhood between 1990-2000 is associated with a 1.1 percentage point decrease in the change in the share of black households, with seeming replacement by white households. This is contextualized by an average 0.6 percentage point increase in the share of blacks among all communities from 1990-2000. Yet, from 2000-2010 environmental cleanups were not found to have a statistically significant impact on racial composition.