Climate change and increasing natural disasters coupled with years of deferred maintenance have added pressure to infrastructure in urban areas. Thus, monitoring for failure of these systems is crucial to prevent future impacts to life and property. Participatory assessment technique for infrastructure provides a community-based approach to assess the capacity and physical condition of infrastructure. Furthermore, a participatory assessment technique for infrastructure can encourage grassroots activism that engages residents, researchers, and planners in the identification of sustainable development concerns and solutions. As climate change impacts disproportionately affect historically disenfranchised communities, assessment data can further inform planning, aiming to balance the distribution of public resources towards sustainability and justice. This paper explains the development of the participatory assessment technique for infrastructure that can provide empirical data about the condition of infrastructure at the neighborhood-level, using stormwater systems in a vulnerable neighborhood in Houston, Texas as a case study. This paper argues for the opportunity of participatory methods to address needs in infrastructure assessment and describes the ongoing project testing the best use of these methods.
Purpose Participatory action research can improve scientific knowledge and community capacity to address disaster resilience and environmental justice. Evidence from the literature suggests that resident participation enhances assessment of environmental risks, raises awareness, and empowers residents to fight for equitable distribution of hazard and climate risk adaptations. Yet, risk assessment and urban planning processes still frequently operate within expertise-driven groups without significant community engagement. Such fragmentation results in part from a lack of appreciation for community expertise in built environment adaptations and educational tools to support resident involvement in the often technical built environment planning processes. Approach A participatory research and place-based education project was developed that enhanced co-learning between residents and researchers while collecting and analyzing local data on flood resilience in the built environment. Five research activities constitute the curriculum of resilience education on stormwater infrastructure: 1) establishment of partnership agreement/MOU, 2) participatory GIS to identify flooding issues, 3) water quality testing and health survey, 4) stormwater infrastructure assessment, and 5) urban/landscape design. Partners included high school and college students, residents, and environmental justice organizations. Findings Outcomes include a stakeholder approved infrastructure assessment smartphone application, neighborhood maps of drainage issues, a report of water containments, and neighborhood-scaled green infrastructure provisions and growth plans. Findings indicate that participatory research positively contributed to resilience knowledge of participants. Value This paper outlines an interdisciplinary pedagogical strategy for resilience planning that engages residents to assess and monitor the performance of stormwater infrastructure and create resilience plans. The paper also discusses challenges and opportunities for similar participatory projects.
Existing environmental justice (EJ) and hazard vulnerability literatures inadequately address key texts and topics related to critical physical infrastructure, including stormwater, green space, sewerage, energy, and roads, among other systems. This scoping review demonstrates how fundamental principles of EJ can bolster and compliment those of social vulnerability (SV) with a focus on stormwater systems and flood risks. The discussion and conceptual framework provide in-depth insight to how neighborhoods are not inherently vulnerable, but occupy built environments that are systematically sequestered, neglected, and underserved. Social processes and larger planning and development patterns shaped by power and privilege create areas of both prosperity and disadvantage. These outcomes are brought about specifically by early racial zoning, segregation, legalized redlining, and ultimately the isolation of racial minorities that have led to diminished tax bases and built environments in disrepair. Thus, infrastructural robustness and resilience at the neighborhood level result directly from human decisions and social ideologies of environmental racism and classism. The associated human-built environment manifests social and physical circumstances of damage and disease mentioned in both the SV and EJ literatures. The built environment must be explored with a progressive lens that views physical infrastructure as an extension of social circumstances to gain a comprehensive and robust understanding of how low-income communities and communities of color are unequally managed and protected in both daily environmental conditions and extreme events.
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