The city government of Chicago adopted a ‘racial equity’ approach to tackle racial disparities in COVID‐19 outcomes. Drawing on experience addressing core vulnerabilities associated with HIV risk, Chicago public health experts who designed COVID‐19 mitigation initiatives recognised that the same social determinants of health drive racial disparities for both HIV and COVID‐19. Yet, when building an infrastructure to respond to COVID‐19, disease surveillance and data collection became the priority for investment ahead of other forms of public health work or the provision of social services. The building of a disease surveillance infrastructure that responded to and supplied data took precedence over addressing social determinants of poor health. Community‐based organisations that might have otherwise organised for social service provision were incorporated into this infrastructure. Further, public health officials often failed to heed the lessons learned from their experience with HIV vulnerability. Based on qualitative analysis of 56 interviews with public health experts and policymakers in Chicago, we argue that the prioritisation of disease surveillance, coupled with a scarcity model of public health provision, undermined the city’s attempt to redress racial inequities in outcomes. We argue that the economisation of pandemic response exacerbates health disparities, even when racial equity frameworks are adopted.
Urban greening initiatives frequently promise to support economic growth and to improve environmental conditions for communities with ecological science. Despite these lofty goals, much of the labor required to carry out the quotidian, mundane work of cultivating and maintaining urban nature is provided by unpaid volunteers or low-wage landscapers. Drawing on ethnographic research and 50 in-depth interviews with experts and volunteers who manage greening initiatives in Chicago, this article provides an account for why greening labor is valued in abstract symbolic terms but economically marginalized. Namely, I argue that the everyday labor of greening cities is a distinct form of devalued care work that can be referred to as greenwork. Greenwork is devalued because: (1) urban nature is affectively framed as an invaluable asset to communities, (2) greening initiatives have a stratified labor force with few professional opportunities, and (3) nature is theorized as complex and self-sustaining by experts.
Drawing on the case of parks and marginal spaces in Chicago, considered as novel ecosystems, this essay works to unpack some of the costs and limitations of how conservation value has been defined by conservationists. Namely, conservation value tends to center pristine, historical ecosystems like tallgrass prairie over the small pockets where many native species continue to survive and form new ecological relationships. By engaging queer and trans theories and thinkers who argue that fixation on the past can limit evaluations of the present, I argue for a wider vision of conservation value that is more open to creative possibilities for survival into the future.T allgrass prairie is one of the main reasons I have chosen to be a Midwesterner. I am a sociologist by profession and first moved to Chicago for graduate school, but the dunes and the prairies have kept me happy here. In addition to being a sociologist, I am also a queer and genderfluid person with a background in hiking and backpacking. In my experience, being outdoors has often been an important confirmation that life takes many forms, something that my experience of gender and sexuality also attest to.Prairies are home to a diversity of forms, colors, and textures due to the density of vegetation that they foster. I was charmed when I first encountered a small, reconstructed prairie area in my local park. In fact, restored or recreated areas are some of my favorite prairies. I treasure the natural areas peppered throughout the Chicago Park District because they are often relatively small, unique, and dynamic. These are ecological communities that were, in recent memory, something else. And with care, these spaces are becoming something new: unique ecological communities specific to the place where they are situated. The small, restored prairie and dune area in Loyola Park, a park in my neighborhood, is among my favorites. Clusters of purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea), white wild indigo (Baptisia alba), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), and sand reed (Calamovilfa longifolia) dot this part of the park. Nestled between these perennials, where they can get sufficient moisture, are common introduced plants like plantain (Plantago major).Despite my enthusiasm, these kinds of small, recreated ecological communities are not highly valued by many in the conservation field. At best, these spaces might be considered opportunities to engage the public or mitigate flooding, but they are not considered to have much conservation value. Conservation value is sometimes based on the rarity or sensitivity of the native species represented in one place. This kind of value leads conservationists to prioritize sites that most closely approximate pure, unadulterated versions of ecological communities. The few remnant expanses of tallgrass prairie composed of native grasses, wildflowers, and the occasional oak tree have immense conservation value but now exist only in widely separated fragments that have been altered over...
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