As a concept, social vulnerability describes combinations of social, cultural, economic, political, and institutional processes that shape socioeconomic differentials in the experience of and recovery from hazards. Quantitative measures of social vulnerability are widely used in research and practice. In this paper, we establish criteria for the evaluation of social vulnerability indicators and apply those criteria to the most widely used measure of social vulnerability, the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI). SoVI is a single quantitative indicator that purports to measure a place's social vulnerability. We show that SoVI has some critical shortcomings regarding theoretical and internal consistency. Specifically, multiple SoVI-based measurements of the vulnerability of the same place, using the same data, can yield strikingly different results. We also show that the SoVI is often misaligned with theory; increases in variables that contribute to vulnerability, like the unemployment rate, often decrease vulnerability as measured by the SoVI. We caution against the use of the index in policy making or other risk-reduction efforts, and we suggest ways to more reliably assess social vulnerability in practice.

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Little attention has been paid to the role of early land use institutions in development patterns, the creation of disamenity zones of environmental injustice, and the promotion of space-consuming suburban development. This study uses historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and spatial analytic techniques to expose zoning's tendency to spread disamenities and disperse incompatible land uses in early Phoenix. While on paper Euclidean zoning's stratification of land uses in Phoenix promotes progressive ideals for reduction of blight and improvement of city health, analysis at a finer scale using Sanborn maps reveals that zoning decisions in Phoenix tended to promote the expansion of fragmented land uses, especially disamenity zones that targeted poor minority neighborhoods. Zoning encouraged the expansion of industry while attracting residents to newly developed suburbs with guaranteed protection from blight.Booming cities founded largely on speculation, boosterism, and a zeal for growth emerged in the U.S. West during the late nineteenth century. Little attention has been paid to the role of early land use institutions in development patterns, the creation of disamenity zones of environmental injustice, and the promotion of space-consuming suburban development. Phoenix, Arizona, a prominent southwestern boom city, adopted Euclidian zoning as a means of beautification, protection of property values, removal of nuisance land uses, and encouragement of more efficient industry (Arizona Republican, 1922a, b;Larsen & Alameddin, 2007). In this study, we explore the differential impacts of early twentieth century zoning on a booming U.S. city. Using extant literature that highlights zoning regulations impacts on development, we focus on a historic case and the issues surrounding environmental inequalities and land use patterns.Though the pattern zoning rules established affected many dimensions of urban life-access, connection, proximity, and so on-these effects were gradually lost sight of. Regulations were applied as if floating in space somewhere, with little thought about their overall arrangement or pattern, how one zone fits with another, how they collectively create patterns, and how, in aggregate, they can produce congested cores or peripheral wastelands. (Talen, 2011, pp. 57-58) Drawing from Talen's argument, we investigate the impact of zoning in Phoenix at its most seemingly organized, hierarchical state: from the city's adoption of its first zoning ordinance in 1930 to the early stages of the post-World War II era. Rather than assess the spatial organization of zones themselves, we empirically analyze changes in land use heterogeneity and incompatibility at the sub-parcel scale. Using Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to examine land use coverage of early Phoenix pre-zoning (1915) and post-zoning (1949), we determine which zones were prone to land

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