Equity is sometimes defined in terms of opportunities to access the complex couplings of data, infrastructure, technology, and resources that affect social well-being. Data and technology play increasing roles in improving the justice of resource access and allocation. Information is also crucial for helping citizens anticipate, plan, and respond to impacts of climate change. Ensuring equitable opportunities and outcomes for vulnerable populations during the transition to sustainable and resilient cities depends in large measure upon access to the benefits of technologies, data, space and resources across the rural-urban gradient. Co-chairs: Sarah Williams, Sheila Kennedy, Alan Berger, Rafi Segal, and Larry Sass.
Access to Data. Trends in data access are very much going in the wrong direction. Climate and environmental data are increasingly controlled and monetized by private entities, even though they are often generated by citizens using public infrastructure. Costly access to data affects how research is designed, arguably to the detriment of vulnerable populations in favor of more affluent organizations and social groups. Understanding risks and adaptation planning by vulnerable populations is weakened, leading to worse outcomes for communities already at higher risk from the legacy of environmental and spatial injustice.
Access to Technology. Ensuring access to information and resources depends upon an affordable and widely available mix of low, medium, and high-fi technologies when planning for equitable resilience. The technologies of architecture, planning, and urban design range from building materials to regional infrastructural systems. Knowing what technologies and infrastructures can be relied upon during disasters in vulnerable communities is a critical issue. Knowing what technologies may need to be brought in to help facilitate recovery, and what institutions are best suited to do so, is also vital.
Access to Space and Resources. It has long been known that resilience depends upon access to fundamental natural resources such as water, land, energy, housing, food, etc. However, only rarely have societies ensured equitable access to these resources. Access to safe drinking water supplies within the service areas of late 20th c. U.S. cities came close in some cities – though that may be devolving in the 21st century as witnessed by drinking water crises in Flint, MI, Newark, NJ, and countless rural towns. By comparison, land holdings are increasingly concentrated, with the exception of hazardous lands, which are systematically left for poor and marginalized social groups. These issues need to be framed in spatial design terms.
Readings
Cutter, Susan L., Lindsey Barnes, Melissa Berry, Christopher Burton, Elijah Evans, Eric Tate, and Jennifer Webb. 2008. “A Place-Based Model for Understanding Community Resilience to Natural Disasters.” Global Environmental Change, Local evidence on vulnerabilities and adaptations to global environmental change, 18 (4): 598–606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.07.013.
Ford, James D., Simon E. Tilleard, Lea Berrang-Ford, Malcolm Araos, Robbert Biesbroek, Alexandra C. Lesnikowski, Graham K. MacDonald, Angel Hsu, Chen Chen, and Livia Bizikova. 2016. “Opinion: Big Data Has Big Potential for Applications to Climate Change Adaptation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (39): 10729–32. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614023113.
Landry, Jean-Noé, Keira Webster, Bianca Wylie, and Pamela Robinson. n.d. “How Can We Improve Urban Resilience with Open Data?,” 56.
Overpeck, Jonathan T., Gerald A. Meehl, Sandrine Bony, and David R. Easterling. 2011. “Climate Data Challenges in the 21st Century.” Science 331 (6018): 700–702. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197869.
Ross, Tracey. 2013. “A Disaster in the Making: Addressing the Vulnerability of Low-Income Communities to Extreme Weather.” Center for American Progress.