ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the arrangement of industrial space in the industrial and postindustrial city and its impact on the environmental health and well-being of low-income communities of color. Specifically, Checker describes how zoning codes charted a course for economic development that protected affluent residents and relegated out-of-the-way, minority communities to live side by side with polluting facilities. Zoning decisions thus mapped out a path for shifting economic agendas and structured the kinds of opportunities available to different groups of people. They dictated whether neighborhoods would be adjacent to a waste transfer station or factory, to a park, or to a commercial area. Zoning decisions set property values, transportation options, the quality of schools, and health outcomes. In short, they demarked which parts of the city would be protected from environmental harms and which would be sacrificed to them.
