Background
Somerville | Chinatown | |
---|---|---|
Environmental Justice (EJ) Indexes | ||
EJ Index for Particulate Matter (PM 2.5) | 52 | 78 |
EJ Index for Ozone | 51 | 81 |
EJ Index for NATA* Diesel PM | 36 | 93 |
EJ Index for NATA* Air Toxics Cancer Risk | 50 | 83 |
EJ Index for NATA* Respiratory Hazard Index | 49 | 84 |
EJ Index for Traffic Proximity and Volume | 80 | 99 |
Environmental Indicators | ||
Particulate Matter (PM) | 13 | 14 |
Ozone | 26 | 25 |
NATA* Diesel PM | 80-90th | 95-100th |
NATA* Air Toxics Cancer Risk | <50th | 70-80th |
NATA* Respiratory Hazard Index | 50-60th | 80-90th |
Traffic Proximity and Volume (daily traffic count/distance to road) | 94 | 99 |
Demographic Indicators | ||
Demographic Index | 47 | 89 |
Minority Population | 51 | 80 |
Low Income Population | 43 | 92 |
Linguistically Isolated Population | 80 | 98 |
Population with Less Than High School Education | 52 | 93 |
Population under Age 5 | 30 | 31 |
Population over Age 64 | 30 | 31 |
The CAFEH partnership
Methods
Data Collection Methods | n | Time Point |
---|---|---|
Key Informant interviews | 15 | Baseline |
Observations | 10 | Ongoing |
Reports | 2 | Baseline |
Meeting summary log | 1 | Ongoing |
Key informant interviews
Observations
Document review
Data analysis
Results
… both of these communities were influenced by the building and development of I-93 and the Mass Pike. Chinatown, half of it was destroyed; Somerville, they fought against the highway and it was built against their wishes. So, in both communities … boundaries … were largely defined by the construction of the highways. It goes way back. It is very deep.
Somerville
… I characterize the population in thirds. I would say one of the thirds is the old blue-collar community, which still lives here. One third is the young educated, but not at this point wealthy, population and then the third is the immigrant population.
… in Somerville [language demographics] are almost equal Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, and there are an awful lot of others here. When people have to move out of town they don’t like it, and many people come back and spend their days or weekends here.
Activism and political power in Somerville
… a number of us first started thinking about … participating in how the city evolves, particularly areas with large-scale developments about 20 years ago. Initially, we worked in parallel with city government. We focused a lot at Assembly Square because it is as big as downtown Boston from North to South station and it was largely underutilized after the manufacturing businesses left post WWII. We had citywide meetings, large charrettes, … we were working in parallel with city government … the larger developers … upper hand … After that we got in a series of pretty large lawsuits that we largely wrote ourselves against the four biggest law firms in Boston in real estate and environmental litigation. It took five years, in the meantime we had written zoning and lots of other things. … we ended up winning three fully prosecuted lawsuits in three different court venues on three different principles of law, which took a number of years to play out.
… STEP [the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership, a grassroots coalition] … went to every meeting [Green Line planning meeting] … and put 1500 people in three meetings … the state didn’t want to do the Green Line, they wanted to substitute entirely non-Somerville projects even though the Green Line was the single largest environmental mitigation project for our violations of the Clean Air Act and the state of limitation plan which is how surface transportation relates in federal regulations to the Clean Air Act. So, following that kind of massive unity of citizens [referring to residents at Green Line meetings] and elected officials and others, the state relented and decided to go ahead with the Green Line.
When a developer came in and wanted to build a rental building next to my Stop and Shop and we fought to make that condos, and it is going to be condos … it hasn’t been passed yet, it is under consideration. That is one thing we have been working on with the city for a long time, but the city is undergoing a zoning revamp so it is part of that whole process.
Interstate-93, TRAP and public health action
During the period when (a key informant) and her crew were trying to fight I-93, Somerville had incredibly corrupt politics. Everybody was on the take. They had very little influence because of what was going on at the political level. … that was what really screwed things up, decisions were made that didn’t make any sense. There was as much activism in Somerville [about corruption] as there was about fighting the inner belt.
We lost half of our neighborhood on Wisconsin Ave, people moved out because they didn’t want to deal with all the construction going on and didn’t want to wait until their house was gone.
We requested I-93 go underground, we were against the elevation. We formed the East Somerville Committee Action group, the first active group in the city; we were civically involved for a long time, and then expanded, this included mostly neighbors, community members. We were protesting, the group stood where the excavation was going to happen. We canvased door to door, except it was too late, the road was planned and construction began.
I would like to be able to say that we come up with some real solutions to reduce people’s’ exposure. Technical solutions that are beneficial to people in new housing and old housing. So very concretely those are what I would like to see happen. On a community level in terms of people’s understanding, being able to engage in a way that people learn that one it is an issue they need to be concerned about, but two, that they may have some wherewithal to address these kinds of issues so that it is transferable to other things that people are concerned about. So, building capacity to address needed change, would be something that I would like to see.
… at the resident level, this is where we are excited about the Health Lens Analysis [it] is a way to have the ultrafine in the conversation, and kind of nesting that within communities’ concerns related to particular projects that may either increase people’s exposure to ultrafines or generate more ultrafine particulates. So, having conversations that blend what community priorities are especially health determinants and how something like ultrafines play into that conversation and using that as a way to have a community lead or at worst community informed response to dealing with the issue.
… helping on the formation of policy pieces whether it be guidance or regulation on how understanding of the ultrafine exposure plays into development itself or transportation related decisions or really any land use decisions. Part of it is also bringing it into broader conversations that when people are looking at existing conditions or talking about alternatives or actions, making sure that is a part of a conversation as part of the [Project Partnership Name] piece itself.
… while I do think that there is kind of a way to influence up to the state I think most of our focus is kind of our regional scale and going down. Part of it is both kind of municipal leadership, including those who are elected, and municipal staff, like planners, people in community development, people in the engineering or public works side of municipality. So, building awareness but also an actionable awareness around air quality exposure, particularly ultrafine as part of that conversation. So what ways they can alter their work or change what they consider when they look at plans of attack to make change.
… the municipal side I think two ways we have come at is are one, especially in Somerville, working with the [Project Partnership Name] group on what a zoning ordinance might look like if it was taking these exposures into account. So that was looking at zoning that might create a district where people might fall into an area that could be impacted by ultrafine particulates and maybe subjecting them to a couple of additional steps to assess whether or not that exposure exists and if so how they would mitigate it. So, doing that within a legislative piece.
Chinatown
You know, I think the [Project Partnership Name] project over the years it already has increased a lot of people’s awareness of air pollution as an issue. But I don’t know that people really, that other than thinking about it when you open your window, that there is really a lot that people have been able to do about it on an individual level.
I think the biggest challenge is that it [air pollution] is just not the top priority issue for the community. People are concerned about much more immediate issues, like having a stable housing, jobs. But yeah, I think that is probably the biggest difficulty.
… there are a lot of more pressing changes that are going on in … Chinatown. I think specifically about the threat of gentrification and displacement, and that a lot of these threats are very imminent, in that people while interested in talking about maybe sound barriers and health disparities, might not be as interested in investing a lot of time to talk about a threat that feels a lot less on their doorstep.
I would like to see us make some actual change that has an impact on the Chinese community members that we work with. You know, so maybe making sure that one of the new affordable developments or at least a development with a significant amount of affordable housing has a good air filtration system, or making some changes to the Reggie Wong Park, that would be helpful.
I mean I think that the sector of the community that is probably easiest for us to reach out to and that we have tended to rely on, are the elderly, because the elderly residents, most of them are living in subsidized housing of some type and they are the most active residents in the community because they have time on their hands, they are stable. … whenever you have a communal meeting it is always the elderly that you can really count on them to come out. And you know Chinatown Resident Association it is mixture of generations but it is predominantly those elderly. … we have pretty extensive ties with the home base of active elderly residents, and they are also the most active voters.
I mean I guess we just talk about it in relationship to Chinatown’s history. And you know, because I think the presence of the two highways it is really a part of Chinatown’s history, always being the disempowered community and having land taken from the community and not being protected residents like other neighborhoods. I think we connect it to reinforcing and educating people about the history. And then which is connected, so we try to connect it to other issues, because in a lot of ways we have to understand the history to feel like we have the right to stand up and fight for things….
And if you go back 60–70 years, those were community people’s homes and they were razed during urban renewal. And it was just after urban renewal they gave the land to the highways, and then the land they didn’t give to the highways, there was a small amount of replacement housing built, and the rest of it they gave to Tufts, I think actually most of it was to the Floating Hospital at that time. So that kind of history is important for people to feel like yeah oh we actually do have a right to that land, it is not just that Tufts has a right to this land, we don’t.
Activism and political power in Chinatown
I mean I think the main community assets are it is a fairly organized community, so we already have the resident association, we already have CPA [Chinese Progressive Association, a partner to many [Project Partnership Name] studies]. And there are a few individual tenant associations that we have ties with.
I think the tactics that we use are pretty common, like we will use the Chinese media, we will print flyers, every once and a while we will print a newsletter that we might distribute, we do events, like in the summer we do Chinatown block party with a few different organizations and kind of use that as an educational fair. And then you know workshops in the different housing developments as well as community meetings we usually hold in the Quincy school cafeteria. That is where the Residents Association holds its meetings and it is just a really common meeting space. I don’t think there is anything particularly creative about our strategies, I mean sometimes not so much around [Project Partnership Name] but around our Chinatown Stabilization campaign we have done some artistic things too.
Interstate-93, TRAP and public health action
From being part of other translated meetings, this one felt a more genuine presentation of materials in two languages – with the presentation being generated in Cantonese and facilitators actively trying to make space for non-English speaking residents in small group conversations.