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- Genre: Academic theses
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This dissertation explores vulnerability to extreme heat hazards in the Maricopa County, Arizona metropolitan region. By engaging an interdisciplinary approach, I uncover the epidemiological, historical-geographical, and mitigation dimensions of human vulnerability to extreme heat in a rapidly urbanizing region characterized by an intense urban heat island and summertime heat waves. I first frame the overall research within global climate change and hazards vulnerability research literature, and then present three case studies. I conclude with a synthesis of the findings and lessons learned from my interdisciplinary approach using an urban political ecology framework. In the first case study I construct and map a predictive index of sensitivity to heat health risks for neighborhoods, compare predicted neighborhood sensitivity to heat-related hospitalization rates, and estimate relative risk of hospitalizations for neighborhoods. In the second case study, I unpack the history and geography of land use/land cover change, urban development and marginalization of minorities that created the metropolitan region's urban heat island and consequently, the present conditions of extreme heat exposure and vulnerability in the urban core. The third study uses computational microclimate modeling to evaluate the potential of a vegetation-based intervention for mitigating extreme heat in an urban core neighborhood. Several findings relevant to extreme heat vulnerability emerge from the case studies. First, two main socio-demographic groups are found to be at higher risk for heat illness: low-income minorities in sparsely-vegetated neighborhoods in the urban core, and the elderly and socially-isolated in the expansive suburban fringe of Maricopa County. The second case study reveals that current conditions of heat exposure in the region's urban heat island are the legacy of historical marginalization of minorities and large-scale land-use/land cover transformations of natural desert land covers into heat-retaining urban surfaces of the built environment. Third, summertime air temperature reductions in the range 0.9-1.9 °C and of up to 8.4 °C in surface temperatures in the urban core can be achieved through desert-adapted canopied vegetation, suggesting that, at the microscale, the urban heat island can be mitigated by creating vegetated park cool islands. A synthesis of the three case studies using the urban political ecology framework argues that climate changed-induced heat hazards in cities must be problematized within the socio-ecological transformations that produce and reproduce urban landscapes of risk. The interdisciplinary approach to heat hazards in this dissertation advances understanding of the social and ecological drivers of extreme heat by drawing on multiple theories and methods from sociology, urban and Marxist geography, microclimatology, spatial epidemiology, environmental history, political economy and urban political ecology.
ContributorsDeclet-Barreto, Juan (Author) / Harlan, Sharon L (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Hirt, Paul (Committee member) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
For the death penalty to be justified, it must be reserved for the worst of the worst. In his 2011 study of Connecticut's death penalty system, however, John Donohue found that arbitrariness and discrimination are defining features. Donohue's finding that non-white defendants whose victims were white are six times more likely to receive the death penalty indicates that race is more a predictor of a death sentence than the egregiousness of the crime. An analysis of capital sentencing outcomes in Maricopa County, Arizona reveals that the race of the victim is not related to the likelihood of receiving a death sentence, but the race of the defendant is. Use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), logistic regression, and an egregiousness calculation are employed to analyze capital sentencing trial outcomes in Maricopa County from 2009 through 2011. This triangulated approach is applied to test three theoretically-derived models - the Donohue model, the Illinois Commission model, and the Functional model. The findings indicate that during the given time period in Maricopa County, the race of the defendant was statistically significant in cases with low to mid-levels of egregiousness, but was no longer significant in the most egregious cases. The results also reveal that the most egregious cases, typically indicated by the presence of a prior conviction and multiple victims, are nearly five times more likely to result in an outcome of death. While the results of this study are suggestive only, because of the small sample size and the relatively brief duration of time studied, the conclusions presented aim to provoke further inquiry into states' death penalty systems to address Donohue's allegation of unconstitutional application nationwide. Through a drastic reduction of death-eligibility factors, implementation of a transparent plea bargaining protocol in which the presence of certain aggravating factors preempts the possibility of a plea, and equal funding for prosecutor and defense offices, the death penalty in this country could begin to target the worst of the worst.
ContributorsTraywick, Margo (Author) / Provine, Doris Marie (Thesis advisor) / Baich, Dale (Committee member) / Martin, Nathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The modern food system unsustainably produces both a food surplus and record levels of hunger. Capitalist investment into agriculture disrupted natural cycles and social relations. Marx’s concept of the metabolic rift describes the way capitalist agriculture actively deteriorates the ecology (ecological rift) and disenfranchises people from food (social rift) are traced on the global scale. Then these rifts are deeply explored on the local scale of Maricopa County, Arizona to reveal the ways that even local food systems are enmeshed within the global capitalist agricultural food system. Phoenix, AZ, located in Maricopa County, has made commitments to become equitable and sustainable by 2050 in part to address issues facing the local food system. Efforts to achieve this goal (policies and studies) are analyzed using the frameworks of sustainable development (dominant “green”/ market based sustainability) and just sustainabilities (disruptive/ justice oriented sustainability). These frameworks help determine whether local efforts mend the ecological and social rifts created by capitalist agriculture, or actively deepen them. While a few studies may attempt “sustainable” solutions, they may in fact further entrench local agriculture in an unsustainable globalized food system. The efforts that are able to address both rifts, challenging the logic and structures of capitalist agriculture, are lacking in scale. In order for Phoenix to reach its sustainability goals by 2050, the ecological and social rifts must be addressed together. To do this, residents and policy makers must be able to determine between efforts that toy at the edges of capitalist agriculture and those with transformational potential, as they challenge the structures and logic of capitalism, ultimately mending the metabolic rift. While this is being done on a small scale, much more is needed to achieve a truly just and sustainable food system.
ContributorsLomelin, Marcelo Fabian (Author) / Perkins, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Haglund, LaDawn (Committee member) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022