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Utah (Interrogating Land Use)

These are two images taken during fieldwork in Utah regarding public land debates.

This image is a collage of two images: the top picture shows protestors at the Utah state capitol buildings, while the bottom picture shows red sandstone landscape in Capitol Reef National Park

St. Louis (Interrogating Land Use)

St. Louis is one site in the Mississippi Anthropocenes project.

This image from the Weldon Springs Interpretive Center displays the events at Weldon Spring as occuring in a cyclical pattern.

How 1800s racism birthed Chinatown, Japantown and other ethnic enclaves

This news article summarizes Chinese and Japanese immigration to the U.S.

Which Cities Have Concrete Strategies For Environmental Justice?

This article discusses a recent report by The New School's Tishman Environment and Design Center regarding local-level policy reform to counter environmental injustice.

Mitigating Climate Change Through Transportation and Land Use Policy

This article from faculty and staff at UCI Law's Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR) reports on the possibilities of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through transportatio

LOCAL POLICIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A NATIONAL SCAN

This document is a report from The New School's Tishman Environment and Design Center that examines recent efforts in 23 cities, three counties, and two utilities across the U.S.

Representing Nuclear Contamination and Remediation

danica

Annotation of

Interpretative Center Life Cycle Analysis

In response to

META: How is “the Anthropocene” – by this, or some other name – talked and worried about in this setting? What modes of communication carry and occlude engagement with anthropocenics? What discursive histories shape contemporary articulations?

The Weldon Spring Interpretive Center was a discursive jamboree for those of us curious about how anthropocenics are narrated. This particular display at the center stood out to me becuase of its resemblance to other interpretive center or science museum displays representing the "life cycle" of an organism or of cycles of ecosystem conditions (e.g. forest succession). One of the first displays visitors see upon entering the center, the display's format and captions read to me as a clear attempt to control the discourse about nuclear contamination and remediation in the area. The image--or its creator--wants to do the work of suggesting that the clean up process has brought the place "back to how it was," cycling back to a good beginning. The text used in this display is exclusively neutral or positive. The arrows moving from each circle to the next purports to display how "this area has served many purposes over the years." It states "these exhibits are designed to educate you on the history, science, and efforts of many to bring the Weldon Spring site full circle." In this cycle, Weldon Spring is not a hazardouse waste site or contaminated site but rather "a site for remedial action." Thus we are to see the space as a "home to many people," then "a TNT and DNT plant," then "a uranium feed and matierals plant," then "a site for remedial action," "an extensive cleanup effort," "a successful solution," and, finally, "a place to enjoy and learn." In this emphasis on a "return" to good conditions, the displacement of residents, health issues plant workers and others' faced, and the uncertainties or messiness of what adequate clean up is are omitted. In this image, and in much of the interpretive center, the discourse around nuclear materials, its effects and cleanup, is neatened, simplified, into a narrative that de-emphasizes the actual health impacts of these processes and of the political wherewithall that was required to make that remediation happen.

The notion of cycling back to something is a particularly intriguing move