Rosie Manzo Rachel Scudder
Department of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Design
Benjamin Shirtcliff, PhD
“Ground-Truthing” Environmental Barriers to Human Health: Translational Research using a Multi-Site, Multi-City Approach for Iowa’s Diversifying Small Towns Perry
Abstract Of Iowa’s roughly three million people, one-third, or one million live in small towns with a population below 10,000 (American Fact Finder 2017). Small towns tend to be rural locations with a strong connection to agriculture and limited access to typical amenities needed to support human well-being. Urbanization and small-town shrinkage is well-known but a lesser-known issue is the stabilization of small town population size with immigrant and refugee communities. The invisible change in population has multiple consequences, with some researchers suggesting that a growing urban/rural dichotomy evidences a public health crisis due to a parasitic relationship between cities and rural environments [1]. The current state of research on local life in small towns reveals a critical knowledge-gap linking open space with healthy behaviors: (1) currently, little data exists on the impact of small town environments to contribute to healthy behaviors for vulnerable populations [2] ; (2) few post-occupancy evaluations of such environments have validated efforts to overcome known social and physical barriers [3,4]. This lack of fundamental knowledge limits human and natural ecosystem services to support physical and social activity. Our ‘Ground Truthing’ research (Fig. 2) used (1) transects to determine barriers to healthy lives due to conditions in small-town peri-urban environments; (2) geolocated focus areas across three cities for post-occupancy evaluation; and (3) in the process of surveying residents, local work force, and decision makers for connections to existing ecosystem services. Findings hope to aid small towns in designing, planning, and developing policy to develop sustainable human and natural ecosystems. The presentation makes an important contribution to designers, planners, and researchers interested in improving small town environments for vulnerable populations.
Marshalltown
Analysis & Findings Overall, 206 variables were collected across 44 points. Fulcrum data using Cross’s checklist was downloaded from the app and entered into an Excel spreadsheet. Each transect point was then located using the EPA EJscreen app to identify known proximity factors related to environmental justice. The Excel file was then converted to SPSS 24 for further analysis. Chi-square tests indicated that higher concentrations minorities, linguistically isolated, less-than high school, children under age 5, and low-income populations were significantly (p<.05) more likely to be exposed to particulate matter (PM2.5 in ug.m3); minorities, children under 5, and less-than high school were more likely to be exposed to Diesel PM (p=.05); less-than high school educated were more likely (p<.05) to live close to known respiratory cancer sources; children under 5, minorities, less-than high school, age over 64 (all but lead paint) and low-income had increased proximity to higher volume traffic (p<.05), more likely to live in homes with lead paint (p<.05), more likely to live in proximity to a super-fund site (p<.05), and near a known hazardous waste site and toxic wastewater discharge (p<.001). Since the hypothesis is that vulnerable populations are more likely to be unable to access the built environment for health-enabling resources (eg. walking, biking, gardening), Cross’s indicator of pedestrian supportive environment was entered into a factor analysis as “fully disagree;” and, a principal-component axis indicated four component variances factoring into the relationship between proximity and at-risk populations. An empty multilevel model using an unstructured variance indicated that location is an important indicator of risk (ICC=.69 (.15), p<.001). The intraclass correlation is an important statistic in that vulnerable populations as 69% more likely to live in environments that do not support access to necessary resources like supporting pedestrian activities and are more likely to be at risk on known environmental concerns. Further analysis hopes to identify the specific variables from Cross’s index that are most likely to support access to health-enabling environments.
Figure 1. Socio-ecological Model for Built Environments, Behaviors, and Health
Methods Transects are used in research of the built environment to cut across typical temporal and spatial patterns of development to reveal contrasts and similarities within an ecological context. The transect is essentially a surgical cut, examined through a certain study gradient in order to visualize the varying zones and changes that occur along this path of interest: “a transect is a way of locating and understanding a variety of different types of human settlement within a comprehensive web of natural and human habitats” [5]. As an organizational device, the transect has been used to study housing types and preferences, demographic and economic data, [6] as well as facets of the natural environment, including vegetation health and biodiversity [7]. Figure 3.A Conceptual Model for Including Underrepresented Populations in Future Research on Environmental Justice
Ottumwa Figure 2. Methodology for “Ground-Truthing” Environmental Barriers to Human Well-Being
The ‘ground truthing’ methodology for this study began with the use of transects to determine barriers to healthy lives due to conditions in small-town peri-urban environments. The transects cut across three small Midwest communities in Iowa, Perry, Marshalltown, and Ottumwa, to determine the range of environmental barriers and whether the proximity of vulnerable populations to potentially harmful exposures was by chance alone. Transects were evaluated using the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping tool (EJSCREEN) developed by the EPA. EJSCREEN is a publicly available data source that allows users to see demographic and environmental indicators of environmental justice issues for certain geographic areas. Environmental indicators display environmental pollutants and include eleven data points, that illustrate toxicity and proximity measures for air, waste, water. Demographic indicators include six data points, including low-income, minority, less than high school education, linguistic isolation, and individuals under five and over 64. The post-occupancy evaluation of the transect points across the three cities were evaluated on the ground using the checklist validated by Cross and Küller. This checklist covers both objective measures of the built environment and subjective measures, both of which were assessed by research assistants in the field using a 4-point Likert scale [8]. The application Fulcrum was used a means of geolocating the points at which the research assistants appraised the checklists. Reliability was maintained by surveying app transect points three times: twice in the field by separate research assistants and once online through the Fulcrum app.
Conclusions Small towns throughout the Midwest began diversifying in the 1980’s and simultaneously witnessed a decline in their economic tax-based as higher income earners relocated to cities. Small towns evidence multiple characteristics described by urban design and planning researchers as the key ingredient to successful, walkable, urban environments, eg. New Urbanism. The structure is clearly in place, however history clearly differentiates in how new populations are directly impacted by upportive built environments. Vulnerable populations—as characterized by minority status in once all-Caucasian communities, linguistic isolation, below high-school education, age under 5 and over 64—are more likely to live in conditions that currently do not support pedestrian activity and receive multiple exposures from known environmental harms. Figure 3 suggests an opportunity for research in this area to move forward. Environmental justice can impact known effects (chronic and acute) that directly impact the mortality, morbidity, risk, and weathering of vulnerable populations. First, we must accept that individual experience, group identity, and space play a fundamental role in daily stressors. Simply providing access to green ignores the wide spectrum for how people are differentiated physiologically. Rather, as this research suggests, the practice responsible for the management, planning, and design of the land plays a ubiquitous role in how daily stressors are translated into individual outcomes. Chronic stressors related to environmental exposures and acute stressors related to visibility and access to supportive space (Latino immigrants comment on the need to be invisible to avoid acts of violence) can be mediated through human-supportive landscape design. Landscape architecture prides itself on major parks, i.e. the High-line, and environmental remediation, but seems to continue to neglect the necessity of the banal, everyday “human environment” where a sidewalk, street tree, and crosswalk make a fundamental difference to people struggling against multiple environmental barriers. While this research is in an early phase, findings suggest that small towns could exceed the homogeneous outcomes of New Urbanism with low-cost investments that directly support the Midwest’s newest population with a known model of successful urban design.
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Acknowledgments: Funding for this research was provided through the competitive U-TuRN Translational Research Grant at Iowa State University and the Honor’s College. Special thanks to Kwadwo Gyan (Master of Urban Design Iowa State), Eric Lawrence (MLA and Master of Urban Design), and the Spring 2018 L A 594 Environmental Justice and Built Environments students for initiating the research.