Category Archives: Publications

Urban green space, public health and environmental justice: The challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’

Wolch, J.R, Byrne, J., & J.P. Newell. 2014.
Landscape and Urban Planning, 125: 234-244.
Abstract: Urban green space, such as parks, forests, green roofs, streams, and community gardens provide critical ecosystem services, as well as promote physical activity, psychological well-being, and the general public health of urban residents. Recognizing these benefits, many US cities have implemented strategies to increase the supply of green urban space, especially in park-poor neighborhoods. However, urban green space strategies may be paradoxical. Strategies that are “just green enough”, and that protect both social and ecological sustainability, deserve more attention, as the creation of new green space can lead to gentrification and displacement of the very individuals it is intended to benefit.View this article featuring Jennifer Wolch on “eco-gentrification”.

Keywords: urban green spacesecosystem serviceshuman healthenvironmental justiceplanning strategiesgentrification

A political-industrial ecology of water supply infrastructure for Los Angeles

Cousins, J. & J.P. Newell. 2015.
Geoforum, 58: 38-50.
Abstract: This paper develops a political-industrial ecology approach to explore the urban water metabolism of Los Angeles. Conventional approaches to quantify urban carbon footprints tend to “black box” methodologies that guide the carbon emissions calculus and the social, political, ecological, and economic processes that perpetually reshape nature-society metabolisms. To more fully delineate the water supply metabolism of Los Angeles, this paper combines theory and method from urban political ecology and industrial ecology. This approach offers valuable insights into the spatiality of material metabolisms and the socio-political processes reshaping the relations between nature and society.

Resilience and complexity: A bibliometric review and prospects for Industrial Ecology

& . 2015.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12252
Abstract: Resilience is an increasingly popular concept in academic research and public discourse and is closely connected to complex systems theory. This article reviews research on resilience and complexity in industrial ecology and the broader academy by conducting a bibliometric analysis of the academic literature over a 40-year period (1973–2014). The review revealed a large body of scholarship composed of five clearly identifiable intellectual communities, with resilience theory from ecology especially influential. Based on the study of ecosystems, these scholars conceptualize resilience as a dynamic and adaptive property of systems with multiple stable states that evolve over time. In comparison, resilience research in industrial ecology is limited and underdeveloped. Bibliometric analysis of this literature yielded just 37 publications and a scholarly network with no well-formulated research communities. This contrasts with industrial ecology scholarship on sustainability; a similar search yielded 1,581 publications. Given the emerging importance of the resilience concept and its relevance for sustainability issues, industrial ecology should expand research efforts in this area. The growing body of industrial ecology scholarship on complex systems provides a foundation to do so, as does the field’s long-standing practice of using ecological principles to inform the study and design of industrial ecosystems. The article concludes by discussing how industrial ecology would benefit from incorporating principles of dynamic resilience and, conversely, how industrial ecology approaches could advance broader resilience scholarship.

Keywords: bibliometricscomplex systemscomplexityindustrial ecologyresiliencesustainability