GIS-Based Environmental Equity Assessment in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 1990

Due to the increasing availability of and easy access to several national spatial databases in the United States, the past two decades have witnessed a growing number of empirical studies on environmental equity analysis. These studies have increasingly focused on geographic patterns in various urban areas. However, generalized evidence on environmental inequity is void in the existing literature due to methodological inconsistencies. A systematic case study of the Atlanta metropolitan area, a rapidly suburbanizing and racially segregated urban area, has also been lacking in the literature. Using an integrated GIS approach, this paper investigates the spatial relationship between the locations of toxic release inventory (TRI) facilities and the socioeconomic characteristics of surrounding populations in the Atlanta metropolitan area in 1990. An integrated spatial database was developed to include socioeconomic characteristics, TRI database, and land use and cover for the study area in 1990. Spatial and statistical analyses were conducted in an integrated GIS environment to reveal the spatial pattern of environmental inequity in the study area. Results provide clear evidence of environmental inequity based on ethnicity and poverty in the Atlanta metropolitan area in 1990 and show that poverty is a relatively significant factor in explaining the relationship between distance to TRI facilities and socioeconomic characteristics in the metropolitan area. The results further demonstrate that the hot spots in the environmental inequity within the metropolitan area tended to be spatially clustered around the top portion of the southern central city of Atlanta, midtown, and traditional centers of industry and population.