Right Sizing Flint’s Infrastructure in the Wake of the Flint Water Crisis Would Constitute an Additional Environmental Injustice

Richard C. Sadler, Debra Furr-Holden, Ella Greene-Moton, Brian Larkin, Moses Timlin, Dayne Walling and Thomas Wyatt

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2021, vol. 87, issue 3, 424-432

Abstract: Right sizing has become an essential talking point in discussing next steps for postindustrial and shrinking cities as they struggle to maintain outdated, outsized infrastructure. Yet the literature has been clear that balancing economic and social objectives must be a key part of the discussion, especially given that historical patterns of disinvestment have disproportionately affected socioeconomically disadvantaged and racial/ethnic minority populations. In this Viewpoint, we illuminate concerns on a recent article published in this journal on right sizing that Flint (MI) should have enacted in the wake of its catastrophic water crisis. We present the nature of decline in Flint, as well as evidence from Flint’s recent master plan and its history with urban renewal that demonstrates why recommending such a policy not only goes against common urban planning practice but misses the local context in Flint, which is marked by deep-seated apprehension of the inequitable underpinnings of historical urban planning practice.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2020.1864226

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