Environmental Racism, Injustice and Unfreedom: Lessons for Architects and Designers

Environmental racism refers to the disproportionate concentration of environmental toxicities and harms in low-income communities of color (particularly Black and Indigenous communities) through the systematic workings – both historic and ongoing – of white privilege and white supremacy. More broadly, environmental injustices also include restrictions to environmental resources and infrastructures and the unjust placements and displacements of communities of color resulting from uneven development.

In this seminar, we examine the histories and definitions of environmental racism, environmental injustice/justice and environmental unfreedoms. We closely read and discuss literature from a range of fields including environmental justice, urban political ecology, critical race studies, Black geographies and Indigenous studies, and use the concepts and frames they offer to critically assess how the built environment becomes both a site for environmental harms as well as for advocacy and solidarity against them.