This documentary film is the result of more than two years of research and fieldwork in Bayview-Hunters Point neighbourhood, San Francisco. It narrates the community fight for environmental justice, and documents the conflict between people and government over the safety of the shipyard.
Just Neighbourhoods: Socio-Spatial Justice in Urban Neighbourhoods
Principal Investigator: Dr M. Reza Shirazi
Contact: shirazi@brookes.ac.uk
Project start: January 2018
Project finish: January 2021
Funded by: European Commission
About us
The research explores to what extent redevelopment projects at the neighbourhood scale contribute to achieving socially just and fair environments, and who benefits from them. The main objectives of the research include:
- developing a framework for evaluating different dimensions of injustice in urban redevelopment projects
- carrying out intensive fieldwork in Bayview-Hunters Point (BVHP), San Francisco, including site observation, participant observation, interview, and archival research
- studying the conflict between the community and the city
- producing a documentary film that narrates reproduction of urban injustice in BVHP.
BVHP has been suffering historically from different types of socio-economic problems such as unemployment, crime, displacement, health issues, etc. Part of the neighbourhood, a former naval shipyard, is currently under massive redevelopment that aims to build around 12,000 houses and several thousand feet of office, recreational, and commercial space.
Starting from the mid 1990s, the Navy has conducted clean-up activities dividing the site into different parcels, and the City has prepared plans for redevelopment. Around 2017, it was revealed that a large part of the remediation work was suspect. These revelations sparked off intense debates around the question of urban and environmental justice in the neighbourhood.
Related courses
- Built Environment Foundation (Foundation course)
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 748452.
Leadership
