Research

I am a qualitative social scientist, drawing on human geography, urban studies, community organizing, and popular education scholarship and practice to investigate processes of urban social and environmental change. I am especially interested in the learning and politicization processes of people who work as agents of change, including grassroots organizers, community leaders, teachers and youth workers, young people, artists and musicians, planners, and ordinary people. My main areas of interest include social/environmental justice movements, urban political ecology, community organizing, gentrification/displacement, and popular education.

A series of questions guides my research: What's going on? Who gains, who loses, and by what mechanisms? Is this desirable? What should be done about it?* These questions are particularly relevant in so-called sustainable cities, where it is often implied that all will benefit equally from green development. Without specific measures to mitigate rising rents and address other disparities falling along lines of race, class, and gender, sustainability-themed projects frequently contribute to displacement and oppression of communities of color and lower-income people.

A growing number of grassroots groups are working for a more just  sustainability -- by intervening in mainstream green development processes on behalf of marginalized groups, as well as by initiating community-controlled projects. ​I often use a participatory action research framework in crafting and investigating research questions with people working for change from the ground up. I also use traditional social science methods, including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, surveys, content analysis, and archival research.
*These questions are inspired by: Flyvjberg, B. (2001) Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Succeed Again. Cambridge University Press.

​Current & Past Projects

Resting Safe: The Role of Houseless-Run Communities in Social + EJ Movements
This NSF, Antipode, and Common Counsel-funded research project addresses the role of houseless-run communities in broader movements for more just cities. There are more self-organized houseless communities today than at any time since the Great Depression, and many are involved in social and environmental justice movement (EJ) activities. Bearing substantial burdens of both toxic pollution and housing instability, residents of tent city, tiny house village, and rest area communities have much to gain if urban areas are less polluted—and much to lose when cleanup contributes to gentrification and displacement. Yet, little research has focused on the environmental hazards faced by houseless people, nor the ways in which houseless-run communities are shaping and being shaped by social and EJ movements. To address these gaps, I am collaborating with Right 2 Survive (R2S), an organization led by houseless and formerly houseless people based in Portland, to conduct a national phone survey of houseless-run communities, focused on environmental hazards. I am also conducting interviews and doing participant observation in a half-dozen “green cities” where R2S has supported the establishment of houseless-run communities. One important output of this project will be a multimedia “Resting Safe Toolkit”, developed in collaboration with R2S members and scholars with expertise in industrial contaminants. This toolkit will enable houseless communities across the US to learn about and reduce harm from a wide range of hazards. www.restingsafe.org

Green City Rising: Portland Harbor Superfund Site Contamination, Cleanup, and Collective Action
My dissertation research examined grassroots organizing in so-called “sustainable cities” through ethnographic and archival research. Three questions guided this research: In green cities... 1) What historical and present-day circumstances give rise to grassroots collective action? 2) How do grassroots groups organize to ensure equitable distribution of benefits (e.g., jobs, affordable housing, green space, etc.) emerging from urban sustainability initiatives? and 3) What role does learning play in the politicization and collective action of people working for social and environmental justice in the context of the green city? I addressed these questions through an extended case study with the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a group of urban Native people, Black/African American Portlanders, immigrants, refugees, and houseless people who are fighting for more equitable benefits of Portland Harbor Superfund site remediation. This project shows how those seeking to advance a social/EJ agenda in green cities are often also staunch environmental advocates; impacted communities see social/EJ outcomes and environmental remediation as inextricably linked through access to green jobs, uncontaminated land, healthy fish, and stable and affordable housing near urban waterways. It also demonstrates how marginalized communities face substantial obstacles posed by actors promoting traditional urban growth—even in Portland, a paradigmatic sustainable city with a worldwide reputation for green growth. This research contributes to a growing body of “second generation” EJ scholarship that centers intersectional issues of race, class, and gender; the role of the state; and multi-scalar change processes. I am working on a book based on this research, under contract with the University of Georgia Press.

Equity Planning: The Community Watershed Stewardship Program
Unless social justice objectives are pursued explicitly in sustainability planning, green initiatives tend to reinforce existing race- and class-based disparities. Yet, critiques of sustainability planning rarely offer concrete suggestions for more emancipatory ways forward. Examining exceptional cases in which municipal leaders have already taken alternative paths provides a window into the politics, power dynamics, and practices involved in urban greening initiatives that are attendant to the needs of historically marginalized groups. Moreover, bringing attention to such examples may provide inspiration and the foundations of a strategic approach for other municipal leaders seeking to cultivate a more just sustainability (Agyeman 2005). This research draws on Norman Krumholz’s equity planning framework to outline how one municipal program in Portland, Oregon, the Community Watershed Stewardship Program, overtly prioritizes the needs and desires of underrepresented groups as part of its watershed health mission.

No-Cause Evictions: Culturally Specific Experiences of Housing Instability
This study investigates experiences of housing instability with three (often overlapping) groups: Black/African Americans, LGBTQ people, and elders. Tenant leaders who identify as members of these communities have embarked on a year-long collaborative project to learn how to conduct research, analyze data in historical context, and disseminate findings via several mediums, in their own communities and beyond. In addition to contributing a comparative perspective to scholarly conversations, the results of this research will contribute to CAT's efforts to establish rent stabilization laws and a "just cause" standard for eviction for the state of Oregon. This community-based participatory research project is in collaboration with the Community Alliance of Tenants and Dr. Moriah McSharry McGrath (Portland State University), and is funded by the Sociological Initiatives Foundation. 

Portland Black Gardens Oral History Project A collaboration between MudBone Grown urban agriculture collective and Portland State University (led by Dr. Nathan McClintock and Dr. Julius McGee, funded by the Antipode Foundation), this project is focused on collecting, archiving, and sharing the gardening stories of African American elders, to honor their contributions to Portland's history and foodways, and to teach the wider community about this important legacy. What is the history of Black gardening in Portland, and in particular the Green Fingers Project, in a context of racialized segregation and serial displacement? How did city policies help or hinder Black gardening in Portland from the 1960s to the early 80s? How has gardening contributed to community self-determination and a sense of place for Black Portlanders? Recordings and transcripts will be archived in the PSU Library Special Collections, and will be publicly available online.

​Sustainable City Uneven Development
This collaborative research project with Jamaal Green and Dr. Nathan McClintock drew on census data, popular media, newspaper archives, city planning documents, and secondary source histories to elucidate the structural origins of Portland's "uneven development", exploring how and why the urban core of this paragon of sustainability has become more White and affluent while its outer eastside has become more diverse and poor. We explain how a "sustainability fix"--in this case, green investment in the city's core--ultimately contributed to the demarcation of racialized poverty along 82nd Avenue, a major north-south arterial marking the boundary of East Portland. Our account of structural processes taking place at multiple scales contributes to a growing body of scholarship on eco-gentrification and displacement and inner-ring suburban change while empirically demonstrating how Portland's advances in sustainability have come at the cost of East Portland's devaluation.