“The phrase environmental racism was coined by civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. He defined it as the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.” -Natural Resource Defense Council

The Bronx is a majority Black and Hispanic borough in New York City. While the whiter city center, Manhattan, has access to vibrant green space, public parks, and the waterfront to escape the city emissions, residents in the Bronx are constantly being suffocated by factory and highway emissions. Most public outdoor spaces located in the Bronx are positioned next to truck and highway routes. And unlike Manhattan, there is little access to the boroughs waterfront, especially in the South Bronx, Instead, these waterfronts are occupied by highway routes.

The following maps depict the relationship between race (specifically Black/Indigenous People of Color), truck routes, and green space in New York City.

Methods

Borough boundaries and geo-spatial data are represented with a shapefile that was downloaded from NYC Open Data.

Census tract boundaries and data are from the 2016-2020 5-year American Community Survey, accessed with the tidyverse R package. Census data includes population of:

Black, Hispanic, Asian, White, and BIPOC (Black and Hispanic)

BIPOC population is used to compare racial disparity within New York City

Results

Figure 01

Figure 02

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Figure 04

Figure 05

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