Subtitle: Perceptions, Policies, and Realities
Author: Michael Greenberg, Dona Schneider
Subject: Sociology/Urban Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2279-X
Pages: 300 pp.
Description:

"In their case study of twenty 'environmentally devastated neighborhood' in New Jersey and Philadelphia, Greenberg and Schneider uncover the harsh realities endured by urban dwellers who view the degradation of their living environment not simply as the result of a single environmental pollutant, but rather as the sum total of many factors, including crime, blight, and pollution. Published at the height of the federal policy debate on regulatory reform and related issues, this book is a timely reminder to policymakers that, as we work to ensure that public expenditure is both effective and cost efficient, we must work with state and local governments to coordinate a unified response to multiple-hazard neighborhoods."--Bill Bradley, United States Senator, New Jersey

Only 3% of all Americans believe they live in bad neighborhoods. But 30% to 45% of those who live in places with crime and illegal drug sales, rats and stray dogs, hazardous waste sites, factory pollution, and abandoned and blighted buildings rate their neighborhood as poor quality. Even when these neighborhoods have good schools, parks, and other amenities, their residents' ratings do not go up. This holds true no matter who is asked--young, old, men or women, middle class, working class, or on welfare. Local health and planning officials corroborate resident perceptions.

It is particularly noticeable that stress from living near a toxic waste site--the hazard that gets the biggest attention in terms of dollars spent--is low on the residents' list of fears about their neighborhoods. They'd much prefer to see the money put to fixing the immediate dangers on their block. But because federal and state government policies for protecting public health, lowering crime, and saving the environment are divided into separate bureaucratic cubby-holes, effective planning to improve these stressed neighborhoods is difficult. Beginning with the call for a definition of "environment" that fits the realities of these places, the authors argue for and propose policy initiatives that address all the desperate needs of these beleaguered neighborhoods.

This book is essential reading for students, academics, and professionals in

environmental studies, public health, urban studies and planning, as well as grassroots community organizers.

Michael Greenberg is codirector of the New Jersey Graduate Program in Public Health and director of the policy division of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI). His books include Hazardous Waste Sites: The Credibility Gap, Public Health, and the Environment and The Reporter's Environmental Handbook (Rutgers University Press). Dona Schneider is a member of both the Graduate Program and the policy division of EOHSI and is the author of American Childhood: Risks and Realities (Rutgers University Press). Both authors are also professors in the Department of Urban Studies and Community Health, Rutgers University