Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

225 can work, and their subsequent contemporary access to decision making processes and outcomes (Morello-Frosch 2002). Access to property or green space in the city can be limited for certain racial or ethnic groups because of past decisions that have led to differential housing densities (Heynen et al. 2006). Table 1. Summary of major contributions to the examination and definition of justice relevant to urban climate change adaptation and proposed criteria for justice in urban adaptation. Thick injustice proposes that injustice is the outcome of historical processes and patterns of allocating resources and access to spaces within the city. This approach has also been called the structural-historical perspective, which is concerned with “the extent to which present-day injustices are the outcome of historical development paths, as opposed to contemporary development policy” (Pelling 2003:168). Pelling (2003) argued that it is important to know the difference if we are to know the degree to which contemporary policy interventions can promote justice. For example, Boone et al. (2009) demonstrated that the current disproportionate exposure of white communities to toxic chemicals in Baltimore was the result of zoning decisions made in the 1920s and 1930s rather than recent decisions made by industry to locate in particular areas. From a thick injustice perspective, whether or not the outcomes of urban climate change adaptation are just will be determined by past decisions and resource allocations. For example, an adaptation strategy centered on enhancing existing flood protection barriers will provide little benefit in areas that don’t have flood protection barriers to begin with or whose flood protection barriers have been poorly maintained for the last 50 years. These deeply rooted and place-based inequalities may work to obscure the source of urban injustices and require interventions that are able to rectify the legacy outcomes of past decisions.