The City Project is a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, California that works on equal access to parks and green space, transportation, and related issues at the intersection of social justice, sustainable regional planning, and smart growth. The State of California requires county and city general plans as well as proposed new development projects to address environmental justice matters. The City Project recently created a park access data set that is utilized in a screening and mapping tool called the CalEnviroScreen that helps local governments include race, color, and national origin in their planning and environmental assessments. The US EPA Environmental Justice Mapping Tool called EJSCREEN currently includes environmental indicators such as exposure to lead paint, and demographic indicators such as linguistic isolation at a national level, but does not include park access as an environmental justice issue. The City Project tool can now be utilized within EJSCREEN to expand this data set. To add this important social equity factor to the EPA tool, simply follow these 8 steps:
1. “Go to http://ejscreen.epa.gov/mapper/
2. Select the place you would like to view in the upper right box “Find address or place”
3. Click the menu for “Map Data”
4. On that drop down menu, select “Add Layer from Web”
5. A window will pop up, select “ArcGIS Server Web Service (Whole service)”
6. In the URL box, enter the following URL to add the layer:http://services1.arcgis.com/4ZKi1B1zTblbwgWB/arcgis/rest/services/Park_a...
7. Click the blue button “Add to Map”
8. You can add multiple layers to the map using the “Map Data” menu and drop down features.”
The hope is that by mapping green access, the disparities with health and quality of life for people of low income and color will become apparent and can then be more urgently addressed.
Please see The City Project’s blog for more information.
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