| Chapter 1: | Spatial and Environmental Justice in the Metropolis |
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transportation infrastructures, not to mention a series of monomaniacal strategies at the metropolitan scale in the pursuit of global city-region status during the last decade. However, the significant negative and synergistic air pollution impacts on public health and wellbeing are roundly ignored in the often breathless political and policy discussions and promotional campaigns of recent years regarding how to transform Tampa Bay into a sustainable region for all its residents—both human and nonhuman.
It is for these reasons that the concepts of spatial and environmental justice are so urgently required as a critical analytical framework which could bring into sharp relief the many neglected issues in urban and regional planning and economic development, particularly the socioecological consequences of Tampa Bay's aggressive pursuit of its globalization agendas (Amen & Bosman, 2006). For instance, the rebranding of the Port of Tampa not only as a global import-export hub for some extremely toxic industrial chemicals and flammable petroleum products which potentially threaten “public health security” (World Health Organization, 2007), but also as a glamorous leisure space that fuses new residential and commercial lifestyles to lure wealthy residents back into the city center, ignores a range of potential environmental risks for certain people and places. The right to a safe and equitable built environment is usually one of the first to be sacrificed on the altar of global place competition and economic growth. Happily, there is increasing evidence that the pursuit of commercial and residential growth on the suburban and exurban edges of Tampa Bay and gentrification in Tampa are not being passively accepted. A number of civic and environmental stakeholder groups, including Florida Hometown Democracy, Citizens for Sensible Growth, and Control Growth Now, are contesting these developments and are instead advocating for smart growth and urban densification