TREC Transportation Seminar at Portland State: At the Intersections of Safety, Race, and Transportation with Charlene McGee
At the Friday Transportation Seminar on November 6, 2020, Charlene McGee discussed the intersections of safety, race, and transportation. McGee, who works as the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program Director, outlined the REACH program, aligned the program with transportation as a social determinant of health, and offered recommendations and action items to bridge racial, health, and transportation equity. REACH’s strategy, which focuses on health equity through culturally tailored strategies in community-based participatory and evidence-based approaches, can offer a lot to transportation planners in working toward inclusive, equitable outcomes.
McGee discussed the links between chronic illness, physical activity, and the built environment. This overlaps the historic context of racist planning and its effects on urban form, gentrification, and displacement. Of four chronic diseases, four have direct links to the built environment: heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular diseases, and diabetes. These are connected to lack of physical access among Black/African American communities in Portland, who have been displaced to areas lacking sidewalks or protected infrastructure—such as Rockwood. This lack of connection to active transportation as a part of daily life exacerbates these disparities.
While the biggest barriers to proposals to increase walking and cycling are connected to physical space and access (Pucher & Dijkstra, 2003), safety is more complex than just the physical—especially for Black/African American Portlanders. McGee outlined the experiences of these communities and their feeling unsafe due to bias in unfair policing and even with interactions with drivers. This is compounded even more because these communities often feel as though they are left out of planning and decision-making processes; furthermore, they often do not feel welcome or safe within spaces or events promoting active transportation in the metro. These feelings, of course, are outlined in the experience of the Black community in the face of traffic safety improvements along North Williams Avenue in 2011—who had to fight for a place at the table and make Portland planners focus on historic actions, their long-term effects, and the continued exclusion within the public participation process (Lubitow & Miller, 2013).
The equity strategy utilized by the program and the county focuses on the 5 P’s: purpose; people; place; process; and power. Those P’s guide the issue/decisionmaking process (Figure 1). In regard to transportation planning toward equitable outcomes, this framework offers a great framework for planners to use in community engagement as a tool to advance health equity in transportation. On top of this, McGee suggested the centering of the Black experience in active transportation, the importance of collected and effectively disaggregated data toward racial justice, and how connecting communities to resources and technical assistance can help them achieve their own visions/plans through empowerment and capacity building.
Here’s a link to the seminar: https://trec.pdx.edu/events/professional-development/friday-transportation-seminar-11062020
Figure 1. Equity and Empowerment Lens, Multnomah County
Source: Multnomah County Office of Diversity and Equity
Other References:
Lubitow, A. & Miller, T. (2013). Contesting sustainability: Bikes, race, and politics in Portlandia. Environmental justice, 6(4), 121-126. http://doi.org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1089/env.2013.0018
Multnomah County Office of Diversity and Equity. (2014). Equity and empowerment lens [PDF file]. Multnomah County. Retrieved from https://multco.us/file/5-ps-3-24-14pdf
Pucher, J., & Dijkstra, L. (2003). Promoting safe walking and cycling to improve public health: lessons from The Netherlands and Germany. American journal of public health, 93(9), 1509–1516. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.93.9.1509
Great post. I think the point about layers of barriers needing to be addressed is especially important. I've been involved in research about public bike share participation in communities of color for many years, and it's been interesting to see the progression from: "we just need to get bikes into the right neighborhoods" to "oh, wow, there are a lot of barriers to overcome after the bikes arrive", starting with making sure POC believe that the bikes are for them, too.
ReplyDeleteShawn, thanks for sharing about what seems like a great Seminar. The 5 Ps document seems like a great way to operationalize the incorporation of equity into a process.
ReplyDeleteExcellent summation, Shawn. Your post also reminded me of the work our cohort colleagues did regarding the region's communities of color and their proximities to major air polluters (link below). When Portland's Black community was redlined into Albina, situated next to industrial Port of Portland sites and a massive rail yard with diesel trains and billowing smoke stacks, so began the era of the community's proximity to major sources of air pollution contributing to high lung disease rates - particularly asthma.
ReplyDeleteToday, as gentrification has displaced much of Portland's Black community, it appears that many have moved into the lower-cost housing stock near I-205, I-84, and Powell Blvd - major diesel emissions corridors. And diesel emissions corridors are also correlated to high community childhood asthma rates. What's old is new again, not just in a lack of sidewalks and bike infrastructure that limits mobility options for communities of color. Our transportation policies, combined with our housing policies, continue the cycle of environmental racism today.
Link: https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-portland-study-people-of-color-polluted-neighborhoods-redlining-covid-19/
Link for diesel and asthma: http://www.phi.org/wp-content/uploads/migration/uploads/application/files/xq1rssien18tmqtavs3k97m6ojpp6reyhgmy3ajnh9jhcjy93r.pdf