Environmental Injustice in the Urban Southwest: A Case Study of Phoenix, Arizona - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 315

early twentieth century. 30 Like Blacks, Latinos were segregated by strict, and at times viru-
lent, racist practices, including the vigilantism of an active Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. 24
And like African Americans, with the decline in nearby agricultural employment in the
postwar period, Latinos sought what employment they could in low-wage unskilled jobs
in the city. While the last three decades have seen some geographic mobility for African
Americans and Latinos outside of historic areas of settlement, South Phoenix itself remains
predominantly a Black and Latino low-income area with a concentration of industrial land
uses. The hegemonic racism that held sway for much of the twentieth century insured that
South Phoenix remained a stigmatized zone of poverty and people of color sequestered
on the periphery of the urban core. 31 Referred to as the “the shame of Phoenix” in a 1920
community report, living conditions in South Phoenix were described as “fully as bad as
any ¼ in the tenement districts of NY and other large centers of population.”* As late as 1947
a Saturday Evening Post article noted that conditions in South Phoenix were a match “misery
for misery and squalor for squalor with slums anywhere.” † The continuing presence into the
1960s of tar paper shacks and ramshackle housing without sewage or running water in the
midst of industrial facilities, was a testament to the political power of landlords to ignore
building codes, zoning, and human welfare in Phoenix. 32 With the rapid urban expan-
sion of the 1970s, new zoning, planning, and siting decisions, under the guise of urban
redevelopment, added new hazardous facilities to the mix of industries already in place in
South Phoenix. Among these were hazardous waste handling facilities (TSDFs), mandated
by federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) legislation in the 1970s. 20
17.6 Urban Development, Planning, and Environmental Justice
The high hazard area discussed here reflects a century of urban development stretch-
ing from historically segregated and “dumped on” of South Phoenix to aging work-
ing class suburbs of west Phoenix. The legacy effects of racial segregation and the not
unrelated siting of industries are strongly drawn in South Phoenix. The hazard zone has
been shaped by successive waves of transportation infrastructure development, from
the late nineteenth century railroads to post-WWII freeways and an expanding airport.
While continued economic marginality of central city neighborhoods may be, in part,
attributed to suburban expansion and the resource drain on the central city, 33 it is none-
theless a product of decades of planning and investment decisions made by both the pub-
lic and private sectors. ‡ By the 1930s, the race of residents was an intrinsic part of how
property values were determined for lending purposes. The presence of the minority
population in South Phoenix was considered an investment “hazard,” leading to bank
redlining, perpetuating economic underdevelopment, and inadequate housing in Black
and Latino neighborhoods. 35 Residents in this zone have, for decades, endured pervasive
environmental disamenities while persistently failing to receive significant economic
benefits from the industrial presence in their neighborhoods. Notably, these burdens no
longer go uncontested. In a political and legal environment now shaped by civil rights
and environmental justice principles, a variety of recent lawsuits over the permitting of
* As quoted in Kotlanger. 28
† Quoted in Konig, p. 21. 27
‡ See, for example Hackworth. 34