ABSTRACT
Capitalism is a for-profit economic system in which private businesses compete for survival in the marketplace. Without an adequate rate of profit, and hence rate of capital accumulation, these businesses (and the larger economy) would lapse into economic crisis. As a general rule, capital will always strive to maximize profits by increasing productivity while minimizing the costs of production and distribution. This chapter analyses the political-economic processes that serve to: promote the mobility of ecologically hazardous industries into disempowered communities of colour and white working class neighbourhoods; restrict the ability of the disempowered to move out of dangerous areas for safer neighbourhoods; facilitate the dislocation of the disempowered from ecologically revitalized communities; and limit the ability of the disempowered to leave dangerous jobs for safer occupations. Wealthy white citizens tend to exercise greater control over community planning processes, including the "exclusionary zoning" of dirty industries and other locally unwanted land uses (LULUs).
