Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Pitzer Senior Theses Pitzer Student Scholarship 2016 Parting the Green Curtain: Tracing Environmental Inequality in Portland, Oregon Lindsay E. McCord Pitzer College Recommended Citation McCord, Lindsay E., "Parting the Green Curtain: Tracing Environmental Inequality in Portland, Oregon" (2016). Pitzer Senior Theses. Paper 72. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pitzer_theses/72 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Pitzer Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pitzer Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PARTING THE GREEN CURTAIN 1 Parting the Green Curtain: Tracing Environmental Inequality in Portland, Oregon Lindsay E. McCord Pitzer College Submitted in partial fulfillment of a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Analysis Readers: Melinda Herrold-Menzies Char Miller Spring 2016 PARTING THE GREEN CURTAIN 2 Abstract This thesis utilizes a lens of environmental justice to analyze the history of Portland, Oregon and the formation of the Albina neighborhood in North Portland to understand how this community became a space of environmental inequality. Portland has been a leader in sustainable development, and yet, even with its successes, the city either been unable or unwilling to address the disproportionate impacts of environmental hazardss on low-income and communities of color in Albina. Through an examination of Portland’s history of segregation, stigmatization of Albina and its residents, housing policies, and urban renewal as they relate to Albina, this thesis traces the processes of covert institutional racism that have resulted in Albina being targeted by environmental risks.