In 2023, a coalition of local environmental and neighborhood-based organizations in Philadelphia produced the Green Living Plan, an action-oriented and community-driven agenda shared with the city’s mayoral candidates. This agenda’s aim was simple: to create healthier, safer and more environmentally equitable neighborhoods.
To advance these goals, the Green Living Plan held Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates responsible, with knowledge and data, for directing greater investments and resources toward neighborhoods of greatest need.
And to accurately and equitably determine these neighborhoods, Academy scientists helped find a solution.
An Environmental Justice Index was created by Roman Perez, Winn Costantini and Alexis Schulman, scientists in the Academy’s Patrick Center for Environmental Research, in collaboration with The Environmental Collaboratory of Drexel University.
It was developed to focus specifically on hazards and issues most relevant to Philadelphia — such as urban heat, traffic exposure and flood zones.
“This index reveals the areas of greatest need and disinvestment,” says Costantini, “by comparing each geospatial measurement and location to others in Philadelphia — rather than averages across the state or nation like other similar data sets — making it uniquely regional in scope.”
All this information was then depicted in a public-facing, multi-layered, user-friendly digital map representing 13 zip codes and 23 census tracts across Philadelphia — ultimately supporting local communities as well as assisting policymakers to identify priority neighborhoods.
“Based on input from community organizations, we worked with the Academy to translate community priorities and concerns into maps and narratives, in order to depict the environmental justice and socio-economic circumstances of communities across Philadelphia,” said Vice Provost and Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory, Mathy V. Stanislaus, Esq.
The Environmental Collaboratory of Drexel University co-funds, co-designs and co-implements innovative solutions to environmental problems through transdisciplinary research and community partnerships.
“These maps are a key foundation of the Green Living Plan’s recommendation to deliver resources and policy focus to environmental justice communities.”
This project was recently awarded special recognition by the Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin, and continues to grow to support other neighborhoods in and around Philadelphia. The Academy is working toward a brighter future: using real data to solve real problems for real communities across our city.
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