ABSTRACT
The Borough of Brooklyn, New York, has evolved over the past half-millennium from a sparsely settled, lush woodland to a bustling super-diverse, postindustrial city of almost 3 million residents. The first residents were Native Americans, but since then there has been a steady stream of immigrants from every corner of the nation and the globe, producing an urban ecological series of “invasions and successions.” Unfortunately, as a consequence of conflicts and competitions over spaces and resources, there has been an unequal and inequitable distribution of public goods that have also exposed the least advantaged to environmental hazards. Here we will address that history from a “distributive social justice” with a special focus on Black Brooklynites, viewed through the lens of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
