Urban ozone plumes and population distribution by income and race: a case study of New York and Philadelphia.
Who lives in the downwind areas of urban ozone plumes? Location theory suggests that the poor should disaproportionately populate the downwind area, while the rich are most likely to live outside urban ozone plumes. Dynamically, we would expect that the downwind area would become poorer over time because the rich would "vote with their feet" under the serious impacts of urban ozone plumes. However, the importance of urban ozone pollution could be discounted due to the public's risk perception. According to risk and air quality perception literature, one would expect that the public would likely perceive ozone air pollution as a relatively low risk, compared with other environmental risks and social concerns. Therefore, actual population distribution might not follow what location theory suggests. Who actually does live in the downwind areas of urban ozone plumes? The results from a case study of New York and Philadelphia show that the ozone downwind areas are currently populated by a considerably larger proportion of upper income households and whites than the source areas. Furthermore, the population dynamics data do not provide any evidence for the "vote with their feet" hypothesis. While these findings deviate from the hypotheses prescribed by location theory, they are consistent with what we could expect from theories of risk perception.
Liu
F
F
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D003710:Demography; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D009518:New York; D010126:Ozone / Q000032:analysis*; D010414:Pennsylvania; D044469:Racial Groups; D014505:Urban Population
D000393:Air Pollutants; D010126:Ozone