Skewed Riskscape Dynamics and Social Vulnerability in the American Urban System

Riskscape map of Seattle Washington
Riskscape map of Seattle Washington

This ongoing research program offers an expansive investigation of urban riskscapes that includes both natural and social hazards to test the hypothesis that the social and natural hazard burdens are unequal and unevenly dispersed across the U.S. urban system. Census block group data is evaluated for clusters based on increasing social stratification with the multivariate statistical methods of factorial social ecology. The results are explored to test the hypothesis that the most socially vulnerable populations in the U.S. urban system increasingly bear more of the burden of proximity to social and natural hazards. This research will provide insight into the broad theoretical debate about the world’s risk society. The temporal analyses of the American urban riskscape provides an empirical view of the direction of a risk society that is either broadly distributed, or more concentrated among the most socially vulnerable.

 

Related: see Skewed Riskscapes and Gentrified Inequities: Environmental Exposure Disparities in Seattle, Washington (Am. Journal of Public Health, Dec. 2011); see also Is Seattle Creating Ghettos of Poverty and Pollution? (Seattle PI, Sept. 20, 2011).