Students Guide City Planners on Addressing Environmental Justice in General Plans
In 2020, the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI) published an updated general plan guidance document for local governments. General plans are policy documents that outline a city or county’s long-term plan for growth and are used to guide decisions about land use, development, and public services. This update, following the directive of Senate Bill 1000 (SB1000), included a new section on incorporating environmental justice (EJ) policies and initiatives into general plans. Following feedback on the original guidelines, LCI determined that updates were needed to streamline guidance in an approachable and digestible manner. To achieve this, LCI collaborated with a group of graduate students from the University of California, Davis, in the Environmental Policy and Management (EPM) program to implement necessary updates, resulting in a concise yet comprehensive final product.
After LCI published Guidelines for California Communities to Apply Environmental Justice Tools in General Plans, they received feedback from planners, which led to the question: How can LCI create concise and approachable guidelines while offering the resources and tools that planners in under-resourced municipalities need? To answer this, EPM graduate students – Madison Pelland, Jenny Iloff, Helen Maschino, Nicole Hinostroza, and Chris Nyguen – worked with Nils Jepson, from the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, to conduct outreach with EJ professionals and compile new resources and tools for the development of future guidelines. We sent a survey via LCI’s Listserv to city planners across California, asking questions about their experiences, challenges, and needs regarding EJ elements. Informational interviews were conducted with EJ professionals, including city planners, attorneys, EJ organizations, and writers of SB 1000. These two methods of outreach were foundational to our research, which consisted of a literature review and a tool analysis. We were able to determine which information and resources were the most helpful to planners, which informed the production of this report. At the end of this phase, we identified the following takeaways:
74% of jurisdictions surveyed are planning to discuss environmental justice in their general plan update, with 72% of those jurisdictions being required to implement an environmental justice element and 24% incorporating it voluntarily
Of the nine categories in SB1000, Reducing Pollution Exposure and Promoting Public Facilities were highlighted as prioritized topics.
Collaboration between city planners and their community needs to be increased through outreach efforts, with the understanding that this is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Cities and counties required further clarification on SB1000’s requirements. Requirements include the definition and identification of “disadvantaged communities”, the history of SB1000, civil rights issues, and other related statutory requirements.
Understanding these conclusions, we developed an updated report and tools companion, almost half the size of the LCI’s original guideline from 2020. This format gives necessary context to SB1000 and its requirements, as well as highlights the most useful tools and resources to ensure compliance. Our report stressed the importance of environmental justice by providing its historical background and current impacts on disadvantaged communities. Our companion toolkit and GIS StoryMap detail context and use cases. We highlighted community outreach as a necessary step to address environmental justice, in addition to understanding the guidance document. This information was also displayed on an ArcGIS Story Map. Our team hopes that the Story Map will provide an interactive communication tool that can be easily updated as resources change with time. The companion report and Story Map will be available on the LCI website in the environmental justice section. Environmental justice is a crucial topic in city planning, and we hope it remains at the forefront of planning efforts.
This article is the fourth in a series of six that highlight Policy Clinic projects completed by EPM masters students in collaboration with our partners. On behalf of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management, we'd like to give special thanks to Nils Jepson with the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation for your partnership.