BEES Department Graduate Seminar
Thursday, April 16, 2026
3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Guest speaker Dr. Natalie Vena, Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College-CUNY, will discuss “Categorizing “Disadvantage”: Instituting Environmental Justice Under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (2019).”
Abstract:
For the past several years, the State of New York has used an official category—“disadvantaged community”—to guide policies designed to advance environmental justice. Through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (2019), New York’s legislature directed state agencies to collaborate with environmental justice advocates to identify these places. Disproportionately burned by environmental hazards, they are slated to receive at least 35% of investments under the state’s green transition. Through the same legislation, businesses seeking to open polluting facilities in disadvantaged communities are subject to more stringent permit requirements. Local governments, most notably the City of New York, have adopted the state’s map of disadvantaged communities as the foundation for their own environmental justice policies, including land use decisions. The state’s classification presently relies on a GIS map generated from aggregated quantitative data. Each of the state’s census tracts has received a score based on its relative performance over 45 combined variables, such as air pollution and racial demographics. Census tracts with the highest scores are deemed disadvantaged. In the map for New York City, affluent places like Hudson Yards and much of the High Line score high enough for that designation, while many Queens communities of color do not. Based on three years of participant observation, this paper analyzes how New York came to define “disadvantage” in ways that threaten to exacerbate economic and environmental disparities.
Bio:
Natalie Bump Vena is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College-CUNY. She received her J.D. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s School of Law and Department of Anthropology. Her research and teaching interests concern environmental policymaking in U.S. cities. Her earlier work examines the history of natural resources preservation in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, which protects 69,000 acres of land encompassing Chicago. Vena’s present research project is “The Fight for ‘Quality of Life’: Confronting Environmental Racism in Southeast Queens, NY” and is supported by a Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant. Her writing has appeared in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Journal of Planning History and in edited volumes. She has also written op-eds published in The Daily News and City Limits.
Contact Information
Donna Fahres
df625@drexel.edu